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Luquembo fire, 25 June 2026 Luquembo

Out · last detection 21 Jul 2026, 12:34 UTC

The fire started on 25 June 2026 in Luquembo, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,910 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 23th largest in Malanje since 2016 (of 127 with a page). Number 166 in Angola in 2026, of 486.

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Suggestions: Luquembo · 2026N'harea · 2026Luquembo · 2026N'harea · 2026

Burnt area
9,910ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
26days
25 Jun 2026 – 20 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
25 Jun
2026
Heat detections
253
in a single hotspot: 117 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Average daily power
159MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Jun20 Jul
21 Jul 2026

How it evolved, day by day

25 Jun 2026 · 47 MW · 4 26 Jun 2026 · 25 MW · 3 27 Jun 2026 · 49 MW · 3 29 Jun 2026 · 5 MW · 1 30 Jun 2026 · 355 MW · 11 1 Jul 2026 · 19 MW · 2 2 Jul 2026 · 35 MW · 2 3 Jul 2026 · 138 MW · 11 4 Jul 2026 · 225 MW · 21 6 Jul 2026 · 7 MW · 1 7 Jul 2026 · 139 MW · 10 8 Jul 2026 · 330 MW · 18 9 Jul 2026 · 544 MW · 54 10 Jul 2026 · 307 MW · 33 16 Jul 2026 · 1 MW · 1 17 Jul 2026 · 490 MW · 19 18 Jul 2026 · 106 MW · 12 19 Jul 2026 · 181 MW · 29 20 Jul 2026 · 143 MW · 16 21 Jul 2026 · 36 MW · 2
25 Jun 29 Jun 2 Jul 6 Jul 9 Jul 17 Jul 20 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
41km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 43 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

68% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,642 ha in 2016, 1,029 ha in 2017, 608 ha in 2018, 305 ha in 2019, 1,759 ha in 2020, 373 ha in 2021, 1,232 ha in 2022, 1,852 ha in 2023, 1,375 ha in 2024, 1,467 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,782 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.3% of the area of London (99 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. Luquembo where it started
    9,988 ha reached on 25 Jun
    1.0 %

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)
25 Jun 28.9 °C 27 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
26 Jun 29.7 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
27 Jun 29.0 °C 29 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
28 Jun 29.1 °C 31 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
29 Jun 29.3 °C 31 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
30 Jun 29.4 °C 26 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
1 Jul 30.0 °C 26 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
2 Jul 30.5 °C 23 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
3 Jul 30.4 °C 28 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
4 Jul 30.0 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
5 Jul 29.5 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Jul 29.2 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
7 Jul 28.7 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
8 Jul 27.8 °C 27 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Jul 27.9 °C 30 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
10 Jul 28.9 °C 23 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
11 Jul 29.1 °C 24 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 Jul 29.7 °C 22 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Jul 30.1 °C 20 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Jul 30.0 °C 19 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Jul 30.1 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
16 Jul 28.2 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Jul 26.8 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Jul 27.8 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Jul 29.5 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Jul 29.4 °C 22 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
21 Jul after 29.8 °C 25 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
22 Jul after 31.0 °C 22 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
23 Jul after 32.2 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
24 Jul after 31.7 °C 15 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
25 Jul after 30.3 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
26 Jul after 29.7 °C 20 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
27 Jul after 29.9 °C 22 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
28 Jul after 28.7 °C 19 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Jul after 29.2 °C 15 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
30 Jul after 30.0 °C 21 % 27 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 · 18 Jun 2026
After · 27 Jul 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 2 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 42 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 25: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak42 µg/m³
Days over the guideline11 days
PM1043 µg/m³
Optical depth0.39
293012345678910111213141516
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 · 253Every 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 Angola ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Luquembo fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 June 2026 to 20 July 2026 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 July 2026 to 13 July 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,910 hectares (99.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Luquembo (9,988 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.5 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Angola (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 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 13 July 2026 → 20 July 2026.
  2. Start date: 1 July 2026 → 25 June 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.

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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 1 July 2026 to 13 July 2026. 253 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 (Public Domain). 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.