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ID · Indonesia · –

Kubu Raya fire, 8 August 2026 Kubu Raya

Out · last detection 13 Sept 2026, 18:21 UTC

The fire started on 8 August 2026 in Kubu Raya, Indonesia, and satellites saw it burning for 37 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,735 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 76 in Indonesia in 2026, of 967.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Burnt area
8,735ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
37days
8 Aug 2026 – 13 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit
1
regencies
Started on
8 Aug
2026
Heat detections
683
in a single hotspot: 116 MW
Danger at start
3
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
222MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Aug13 Sept
13 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

8 Aug 2026 · 10 MW · 3 9 Aug 2026 · 40 MW · 6 10 Aug 2026 · 217 MW · 22 11 Aug 2026 · 78 MW · 16 14 Aug 2026 · 13 MW · 3 16 Aug 2026 · 23 MW · 7 17 Aug 2026 · 270 MW · 6 18 Aug 2026 · 786 MW · 43 19 Aug 2026 · 68 MW · 14 20 Aug 2026 · 176 MW · 31 21 Aug 2026 · 45 MW · 9 22 Aug 2026 · 6 MW · 1 24 Aug 2026 · 2 MW · 1 25 Aug 2026 · 9 MW · 1 27 Aug 2026 · 4 MW · 3 28 Aug 2026 · 120 MW · 27 29 Aug 2026 · 85 MW · 18 30 Aug 2026 · 234 MW · 34 31 Aug 2026 · 948 MW · 84 1 Sept 2026 · 583 MW · 56 2 Sept 2026 · 1,473 MW · 138 3 Sept 2026 · 202 MW · 49 4 Sept 2026 · 180 MW · 13 5 Sept 2026 · 542 MW · 62 8 Sept 2026 · 10 MW · 6 10 Sept 2026 · 73 MW · 15 12 Sept 2026 · 31 MW · 9 13 Sept 2026 · 5 MW · 6
8 Aug 17 Aug 24 Aug 2 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
33km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 10.3 mm on 20 Sept.

This area had burned before

26% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 304 ha in 2016, 582 ha in 2017, 2,501 ha in 2018, 745 ha in 2021, 989 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,306 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.5% of the area of London (87 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. Kubu Raya where it started
    9,440 ha reached on 8 Aug
    1.1 %

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 area4.1 ha
Residents≈ 1,400

Inside the perimeter there were about 4.1 hectares of built-up land and about 1,400 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)
30 Jul 32.3 °C 58 % 23 km/h 2.3 mm Very low 3
31 Jul 33.7 °C 57 % 24 km/h 6.3 mm Very low 1
1 Aug 33.8 °C 53 % 26 km/h 3.6 mm Very low 2
2 Aug 34.0 °C 52 % 24 km/h 9.9 mm Very low 1
3 Aug 34.7 °C 48 % 26 km/h 5.0 mm Very low 1
4 Aug 35.1 °C 44 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
5 Aug 34.8 °C 39 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
6 Aug 34.7 °C 44 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
7 Aug 34.9 °C 42 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
8 Aug 35.3 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
9 Aug 34.7 °C 39 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
10 Aug 35.0 °C 39 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
11 Aug 34.7 °C 42 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
12 Aug 34.5 °C 46 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
13 Aug 33.7 °C 50 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
14 Aug 35.0 °C 45 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
15 Aug 33.7 °C 56 % 24 km/h 1.7 mm Low 7
16 Aug 35.2 °C 46 % 24 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 14
17 Aug 34.2 °C 56 % 24 km/h 4.6 mm Very low 3
18 Aug 35.7 °C 42 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
19 Aug 35.0 °C 44 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
20 Aug 34.8 °C 44 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
21 Aug 35.4 °C 43 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
22 Aug 34.8 °C 48 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
23 Aug 33.3 °C 56 % 20 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 15
24 Aug 34.0 °C 52 % 30 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 18
25 Aug 35.5 °C 43 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
26 Aug 34.2 °C 52 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
27 Aug 33.4 °C 53 % 24 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 19
28 Aug 35.2 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
29 Aug 35.7 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
30 Aug 36.0 °C 35 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
31 Aug 35.2 °C 44 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
1 Sept 35.9 °C 39 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
2 Sept 35.0 °C 42 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
3 Sept 34.7 °C 46 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
4 Sept 33.8 °C 53 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
5 Sept 32.4 °C 57 % 25 km/h 6.4 mm Very low 3
6 Sept 34.3 °C 48 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 12
7 Sept 31.5 °C 62 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
8 Sept 32.5 °C 61 % 26 km/h 8.2 mm Very low 2
9 Sept 33.8 °C 50 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
10 Sept 34.6 °C 45 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
11 Sept 34.8 °C 45 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
12 Sept 34.8 °C 48 % 19 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 15
13 Sept 33.3 °C 58 % 19 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 12
14 Sept after 34.8 °C 48 % 27 km/h 3.1 mm Low 6
15 Sept after 30.8 °C 68 % 16 km/h 4.8 mm Very low 1
16 Sept after 29.6 °C 74 % 15 km/h 3.4 mm Very low 0
17 Sept after 30.0 °C 72 % 21 km/h 0.3 mm Very low 1
18 Sept after 32.3 °C 58 % 13 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
19 Sept after 34.7 °C 49 % 19 km/h 0.1 mm Low 10
20 Sept after 33.1 °C 64 % 23 km/h 10.3 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Aug 2026
After · 20 Sept 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 7 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 764 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 344: 23 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak764 µg/m³
Days over the guideline35 days
PM10773 µg/m³
Optical depth7.25
13 Aug20 Aug27 Aug3 Sept10 Sept
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 · 683Every 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 Indonesia

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kubu Raya fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 August 2026 to 13 September 2026 (37 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 August 2026 to 13 September 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,735 hectares (87.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kubu Raya (9,440 ha, 1.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Indonesia (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: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Area: 9,378 → 8,735 ha.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 15 August 2026 to 13 September 2026. 683 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.