Lilongwe fire, October 2026 Salima, Lilongwe
The fire started on 20 October 2026 in Lilongwe, Malawi, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,566 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 95th largest in Central Region since 2016 (of 208 with a page). Number 45 in Malawi in 2026, of 108.
The power measured by the satellite is low (12.7 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
Is it still active?
No detections since 25 Oct 2026, 11:57 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
- Burnt area
- 1,566ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 6days
- 20 Oct 2026 – 25 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 20 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 22
- in a single hotspot: 13 MW
- Danger at start
- 37
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 16MW
- 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 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
70% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 136 ha in 2016, 300 ha in 2022, 919 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,095 ha that had burned before.
- 919 ha Salima fire, September 2025 1,647 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 288 ha Salima fire, October 2022 1,528 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 136 ha Salima fire, August 2016 1,149 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 12 ha Lilongwe fire, October 2022 1,293 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
-
1,130 ha reached on 21 Oct0.5 %
-
Lilongwe where it started445 ha reached on 20 Oct0.1 %
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.
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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Oct | 34.6 °C | 22 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 21 Oct | 36.8 °C | 21 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 22 Oct | 38.0 °C | 17 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 23 Oct | 37.7 °C | 20 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 24 Oct | 34.4 °C | 28 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 25 Oct | 32.3 °C | 32 % | 45 km/h | 0.6 mm | Very high 38 |
| 26 Oct after | 34.8 °C | 24 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
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 22 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 49 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 33: 2.2 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 · 22Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Lilongwe fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 October 2026 and 25 October 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 1,566 hectares (15.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Salima (1,130 ha, 0.5 %); Lilongwe (445 ha, 0.1 %).
- Is the Lilongwe fire still active?
- No fire detections since 25 Oct 2026, 11:57 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Malawi (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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 25 October 2026.
- Area: 1,335 → 1,566 ha.
- Page published (1,335 ha).
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.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 22 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
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.