Kibanda fire, 22 January 2026 Kibanda
The fire started on 22 January 2026 in Kibanda, Uganda, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,760 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 10th largest in Western Region since 2016 (of 255 with a page). Number 8 in Uganda in 2026, of 270.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 4,760ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 6days
- 22 Jan 2026 – 27 Jan 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 22 Jan
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 86
- in a single hotspot: 31 MW
- Danger at start
- 55
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 82MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.7 mm on 28 Jan.
This area had burned before
94% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,448 ha in 2016, 3,818 ha in 2017, 1,995 ha in 2018, 541 ha in 2019, 290 ha in 2020, 2,593 ha in 2023, 1,368 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,461 ha that had burned before.
- 3,780 ha Kibanda fire, January 2017 41,220 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,727 ha Kibanda fire, January 2018 3,703 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,426 ha Kibanda fire, February 2016 1,569 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,130 ha Kibanda fire, February 2025 1,308 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 972 ha Kibanda fire, February 2023 1,069 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 896 ha Kibanda fire, February 2023 1,249 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 725 ha Kibanda fire, February 2023 1,196 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 541 ha Kibanda fire, February 2019 1,249 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Kibanda where it started4,793 ha reached on 22 Jan1.3 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
The weather day by day
ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22 Jan | 37.1 °C | 11 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 23 Jan | 37.9 °C | 11 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 24 Jan | 37.2 °C | 13 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 25 Jan | 38.6 °C | 14 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 26 Jan | 35.3 °C | 24 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 27 Jan | 34.9 °C | 29 % | 27 km/h | 1.6 mm | High 23 |
| 28 Jan after | 32.0 °C | 38 % | 31 km/h | 3.7 mm | Low 7 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 27 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 59 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 50: 3.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Detections table · 86Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 41,220 haKibanda2 January 2017 · 15 days · 12 km away
- 13,858 haKibanda9 February 2016 · 7 days · 17 km away
- 10,795 haBuliisa6 January 2019 · 9 days · 30 km away
- 7,394 haBuliisa4 January 2018 · 3 days · 30 km away
- 9,055 haBuliisa15 December 2016 · 16 days · 37 km away
- 9,718 haBuliisa3 January 2026 · 17 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kibanda fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 January 2026 and 27 January 2026: 6 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,760 hectares (47.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Kibanda (4,793 ha, 1.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Uganda (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
Where to verify it
A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.
Emergency number: 999 · 112
Satellite cross-check
Does something look wrong on this page?
This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 86 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
Where this data comes from
The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Public Domain). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.