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Kota Tinggi fire, June 2026 Kota Tinggi

Out · last measured on 13 Jul 2026

The fire started on 4 June 2026 in Kota Tinggi, Malaysia, and satellites saw it burning for 40 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 583 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 16th largest in Johor since 2016 (of 22 with a page). Number 32 in Malaysia in 2026, of 47.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kota Tinggi · 2020Kota Tinggi · 2019Kota Tinggi · 2022Kota Tinggi · 2026

We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but not yet its hotspots: NASA publishes the yearly hotspot archive only once the year closes. The page picks them up automatically when they are available.

Burnt area
583ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
40days
4 Jun 2026 – 13 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
4 Jun
2026

Where it burned

This area had burned before

92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,303 ha in 2019, 1,156 ha in 2020, 3,658 ha in 2022, 3,272 ha in 2023, 4,235 ha in 2024, 3,696 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 535 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.4% of the area of London (5.8 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. Kota Tinggi where it started
    587 ha
    0.2 %

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 area26 ha
Residents≈ 1,100

Inside the perimeter there were about 26 hectares of built-up land and about 1,100 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

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 May 2026
After · 20 Jul 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 12 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 36 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 27: 1.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak36 µg/m³
Days over the guideline23 days
PM1044 µg/m³
Optical depth0.71
2345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293012345678910111213141516
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Malaysia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kota Tinggi fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 June 2026 and 13 July 2026: 40 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 583 hectares (5.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kota Tinggi (587 ha, 0.2 %).
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Malaysia (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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 999.

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. No Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • 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 License). 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.