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Kipushi fire, July 2026 Kipushi

Out · last detection 13 Aug 2026, 23:09 UTC

The fire started on 28 July 2026 in Kipushi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,785 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 42th largest in Haut-Katanga since 2016 (of 94 with a page). Number 318 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2026, of 523.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kipushi · 2025Sakania · 2019Sakania · 2018Sakania · 2018

Burnt area
6,785ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
28 Jul 2026 – 12 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
28 Jul
2026
Heat detections
189
in a single hotspot: 60 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Average daily power
138MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Jul12 Aug
13 Aug 2026

How it evolved, day by day

28 Jul 2026 · 93 MW · 10 29 Jul 2026 · 135 MW · 9 31 Jul 2026 · 488 MW · 36 1 Aug 2026 · 532 MW · 49 2 Aug 2026 · 264 MW · 19 5 Aug 2026 · 25 MW · 4 6 Aug 2026 · 25 MW · 5 7 Aug 2026 · 85 MW · 6 8 Aug 2026 · 67 MW · 5 9 Aug 2026 · 15 MW · 3 10 Aug 2026 · 9 MW · 1 11 Aug 2026 · 137 MW · 6 12 Aug 2026 · 26 MW · 4 13 Aug 2026 · 26 MW · 5
28 Jul 31 Jul 1 Aug 2 Aug 6 Aug 8 Aug 10 Aug 12 Aug

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

30°high
49km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

94% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,110 ha in 2016, 1,762 ha in 2017, 1,964 ha in 2018, 2,018 ha in 2019, 4,720 ha in 2020, 1,827 ha in 2021, 1,744 ha in 2022, 2,675 ha in 2023, 1,741 ha in 2024, 2,554 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,404 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.3% of the area of London (68 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Kipushi where it started
    6,834 ha reached on 26 Jul
    0.8 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area6.5 ha
Residents≈ 1,700

Inside the perimeter there were about 6.5 hectares of built-up land and about 1,700 residents (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
25 Jul 27.0 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
26 Jul 25.9 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
27 Jul 26.0 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Jul 27.3 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
29 Jul 27.9 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
30 Jul 28.0 °C 27 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
31 Jul 27.4 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
1 Aug 25.4 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
2 Aug 25.0 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Aug 26.0 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
4 Aug 27.1 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Aug 27.2 °C 27 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Aug 27.6 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Aug 28.4 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
8 Aug 27.8 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Aug 28.8 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
10 Aug 29.9 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
11 Aug 30.5 °C 26 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 Aug 29.1 °C 28 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
13 Aug after 26.8 °C 39 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
14 Aug after 24.8 °C 42 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Aug after 25.5 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
16 Aug after 25.9 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Aug after 26.9 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
18 Aug after 28.0 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Aug after 27.2 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Aug after 27.4 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
21 Aug after 27.9 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Aug after 28.9 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
23 Aug after 28.7 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 Aug after 29.4 °C 29 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
25 Aug after 29.6 °C 31 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
26 Aug after 30.6 °C 32 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
27 Aug after 28.5 °C 36 % 47 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 39
28 Aug after 27.3 °C 36 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
29 Aug after 28.3 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 21 Jul 2026
After · 19 Aug 2026

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 · Copernicus

On 3 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 114 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 59: 3.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak114 µg/m³
Days over the guideline30 days
PM10116 µg/m³
Optical depth0.97
23242526272829303112345678910111213141516171819202122
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 189Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Democratic Republic of the Congo ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kipushi fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 28 July 2026 and 12 August 2026: 16 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 6,785 hectares (67.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kipushi (6,834 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.5 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Democratic Republic of the Congo (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.

Satellite cross-check

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

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.

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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 189 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.