Luangwa fire, July 2026 Luangwa
The fire started on 21 July 2026 in Luangwa, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,041 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 21th largest in Lusaka since 2016 (of 78 with a page). Number 138 in Zambia in 2026, of 610.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 7,041ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 18days
- 21 Jul 2026 – 7 Aug 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 21 Jul
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 181
- in a single hotspot: 36 MW
- Danger at start
- 36
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 45MW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 467 ha in 2017, 556 ha in 2018, 1,898 ha in 2019, 3,295 ha in 2020, 2,258 ha in 2021, 1,568 ha in 2022, 1,375 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,426 ha that had burned before.
- 2,258 ha Luangwa fire, September 2021 5,027 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,898 ha Luangwa fire, October 2019 8,733 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,730 ha Luangwa fire, September 2020 3,265 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,545 ha Luangwa fire, September 2020 3,829 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 869 ha Luangwa fire, September 2025 3,017 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 556 ha Luangwa fire, August 2018 3,939 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 309 ha Luangwa fire, October 2025 3,563 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
-
Luangwa where it started7,086 ha reached on 21 Jul1.8 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 Jul | 30.1 °C | 22 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 22 Jul | 28.1 °C | 37 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 23 Jul | 26.7 °C | 45 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 24 Jul | 28.1 °C | 33 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 25 Jul | 26.0 °C | 38 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 26 Jul | 24.3 °C | 39 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 27 Jul | 25.1 °C | 39 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 28 Jul | 26.7 °C | 31 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 29 Jul | 27.3 °C | 32 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 30 Jul | 27.5 °C | 33 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 31 Jul | 27.7 °C | 29 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 1 Aug | 24.8 °C | 38 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 2 Aug | 25.3 °C | 33 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 3 Aug | 26.9 °C | 32 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 4 Aug | 27.5 °C | 27 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 5 Aug | 27.5 °C | 24 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 6 Aug | 28.0 °C | 26 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 7 Aug | 27.5 °C | 30 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 8 Aug after | 26.7 °C | 36 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 9 Aug after | 28.0 °C | 44 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 10 Aug after | 30.4 °C | 38 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 11 Aug after | 30.5 °C | 33 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 12 Aug after | 24.8 °C | 54 % | 58 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 34 |
| 13 Aug after | 23.2 °C | 52 % | 52 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 31 |
| 14 Aug after | 21.7 °C | 56 % | 46 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 27 |
| 15 Aug after | 24.9 °C | 37 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 16 Aug after | 25.5 °C | 30 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 17 Aug after | 27.0 °C | 31 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
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 7 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 26 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 23: 1.5 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 · 181Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 8,733 haLuangwaOctober 2019 · 7 days · 6 km away
- 7,825 haLuangwaAugust 2026 · 13 days · 10 km away
- 29,583 haLuangwa6 September 2026 · 16 days · 18 km away
- 14,382 haLuangwa3 October 2022 · 17 days · 30 km away
- 8,308 haMbire17 September 2019 · 15 days · 30 km away
- 33,869 haHurungwe2 September 2018 · 44 days · 32 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Luangwa fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 July 2026 and 7 August 2026: 18 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 7,041 hectares (70.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Luangwa (7,086 ha, 1.8 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 30.1 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Zambia (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.
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. 181 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.
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 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)). 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.