How long did the Luiza fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 August 2026 to 2 September 2026 (29 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 August 2026 to 1 September 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,532 hectares (55.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Luiza (5,569 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.8 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 36 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 Democratic Republic of the Congo (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

CD · Democratic Republic of the Congo · 2026-08-05 → 2026-09-02

Luiza fire, 5 August 2026 Luiza

Out · last detection 31 Aug 2026, 11:25 UTC

The fire started on 5 August 2026 in Luiza, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,532 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 72th largest in Central Kasai since 2016 (of 84 with a page). Number 436 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2026, of 523.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Luiza · 2026 Luiza · 2017 Luiza · 2024 Luiza · 2019

Burnt area: 5,532ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 29days; 5 Aug 2026 – 2 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; territories
Started on: 5 Aug; 2026
Heat detections: 177; in a single hotspot: 47 MW
Danger at start: 34; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 73MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Aug2 Sept

Play back 31 Aug 2026

How it evolved, day by day

5 Aug 10 Aug 14 Aug 18 Aug 24 Aug 28 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

35°high

36km/h · peak gust

17%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.7 mm on 3 Sept.

This area had burned before

56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,123 ha in 2016, 233 ha in 2017, 200 ha in 2018, 1,687 ha in 2024, 1,063 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,125 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.5% of the area of London (55 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

Luiza where it started

5,569 ha reached on 5 Aug

0.4 %

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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)

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
5 Aug	32.0 °C	21 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
6 Aug	32.1 °C	21 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
7 Aug	30.9 °C	26 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
8 Aug	29.5 °C	41 %	22 km/h	0.1 mm	High 28
9 Aug	30.5 °C	42 %	20 km/h	0.4 mm	High 26
10 Aug	31.5 °C	35 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
11 Aug	29.1 °C	49 %	28 km/h	0.3 mm	High 25
12 Aug	30.7 °C	38 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
13 Aug	31.7 °C	35 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
14 Aug	32.2 °C	28 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
15 Aug	32.7 °C	24 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
16 Aug	32.4 °C	20 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
17 Aug	32.5 °C	17 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
18 Aug	32.5 °C	17 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
19 Aug	32.7 °C	18 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
20 Aug	32.1 °C	19 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
21 Aug	30.4 °C	26 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
22 Aug	31.1 °C	35 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
23 Aug	31.7 °C	33 %	20 km/h	0.1 mm	High 33
24 Aug	33.6 °C	23 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
25 Aug	33.4 °C	31 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
26 Aug	30.7 °C	39 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
27 Aug	34.8 °C	26 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
28 Aug	32.7 °C	30 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
29 Aug	30.6 °C	37 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
30 Aug	32.7 °C	31 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
31 Aug	31.9 °C	36 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
1 Sept	34.0 °C	27 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
2 Sept	33.4 °C	31 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
3 Sept after	33.0 °C	39 %	27 km/h	3.7 mm	Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 29 Jul 2026

After · 9 Sept 2026

Before After

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 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 263 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 216: 14 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak263 µg/m³

Days over the guideline33 days

PM10275 µg/m³

Optical depth2.22

WHO 15

3456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930311234

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 · 177Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Democratic Republic of the Congo ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Luiza fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 August 2026 to 2 September 2026 (29 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 August 2026 to 1 September 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,532 hectares (55.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Luiza (5,569 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.8 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 36 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 Democratic Republic of the Congo (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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 1 September 2026 → 2 September 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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 12 August 2026 to 1 September 2026. 177 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.

Where it burned