Skip to content
worldfires
NA · Namibia · –

Linyanti fire, 7 September 2026 Linyanti

Out · last detection 25 Sept 2026, 11:55 UTC

The fire started on 7 September 2026 in Linyanti, Namibia, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,245 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 12 in Namibia in 2026, of 160.

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

Burnt area
19,245ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
7 Sept 2026 – 25 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit
1
constituencies
Started on
7 Sept
2026
Heat detections
413
in a single hotspot: 103 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
309MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Sept25 Sept
25 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

7 Sept 2026 · 8 MW · 2 8 Sept 2026 · 35 MW · 6 9 Sept 2026 · 299 MW · 26 10 Sept 2026 · 95 MW · 13 11 Sept 2026 · 410 MW · 36 12 Sept 2026 · 293 MW · 44 13 Sept 2026 · 90 MW · 24 14 Sept 2026 · 178 MW · 23 15 Sept 2026 · 151 MW · 22 16 Sept 2026 · 2,298 MW · 96 17 Sept 2026 · 181 MW · 58 18 Sept 2026 · 193 MW · 46 19 Sept 2026 · 58 MW · 15 25 Sept 2026 · 33 MW · 2
7 Sept 10 Sept 13 Sept 16 Sept 19 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
58km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

70% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,989 ha in 2016, 5,077 ha in 2017, 1,745 ha in 2018, 6,089 ha in 2019, 860 ha in 2020, 1,380 ha in 2021, 3,720 ha in 2022, 4,834 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 13,499 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (192 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. Linyanti where it started
    19,342 ha reached on 7 Sept
    5.2 %

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 area0.19 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.19 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)

Started with 60 days without rain: 88 % of the area in Namibia

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
7 Sept 32.8 °C 34 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
8 Sept 31.5 °C 28 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Sept 29.2 °C 31 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
10 Sept 29.3 °C 23 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
11 Sept 30.7 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
12 Sept 32.8 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
13 Sept 34.7 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
14 Sept 34.8 °C 25 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
15 Sept 34.8 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
16 Sept 35.7 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
17 Sept 35.5 °C 12 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
18 Sept 35.5 °C 12 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
19 Sept 33.9 °C 21 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
20 Sept 26.0 °C 34 % 37 km/h 5.3 mm Low 8
21 Sept 26.5 °C 50 % 35 km/h 5.7 mm Very low 4
22 Sept 31.7 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
23 Sept 33.9 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
24 Sept 34.5 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Sept 34.8 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
26 Sept after 35.5 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
27 Sept after 38.0 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 Sept after 38.7 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
29 Sept after 32.6 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 43
30 Sept after 32.2 °C 37 % 48 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 40
1 Oct after 26.9 °C 45 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm High 29
2 Oct after 27.0 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
3 Oct after 29.3 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Oct after 31.7 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
5 Oct after 32.9 °C 23 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 Aug 2026
After · 2 Oct 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 20 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 59 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 35: 2.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak59 µg/m³
Days over the guideline13 days
PM1062 µg/m³
Optical depth1.11
5 Sept9 Sept13 Sept17 Sept21 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 · 413Every 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 Namibia

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Linyanti fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 September 2026 to 25 September 2026 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 September 2026 to 20 September 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 19,245 hectares (192.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Linyanti (19,342 ha, 5.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 67, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Namibia (OCHA COD-AB). 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 20 September 2026 → 25 September 2026.

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.

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 8 September 2026 to 20 September 2026. 413 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 OCHA COD-AB (Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA)) (Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY-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.