How long did the Mafikeng fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 July 2026 and 19 July 2026: 2 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 4,221 hectares (42.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mafikeng (4,245 ha, 1.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 24.7 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class High.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of South Africa (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

ZA · South Africa · 2026-07-18 → 2026-07-19

Mafikeng fire, July 2026 Mafikeng

Out · last detection 19 Jul 2026, 13:08 UTC

The fire started on 18 July 2026 in Mafikeng, South Africa, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,221 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 37th largest in North West since 2016 (of 171 with a page). Number 37 in South Africa in 2026, of 147.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mafikeng · 2025 Mafikeng · 2025 Tswaing · 2026

Burnt area: 4,221ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 2days; 18 Jul 2026 – 19 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 18 Jul; 2026
Heat detections: 88; in a single hotspot: 113 MW
Danger at start: 37; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 816MW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 19 Jul 2026

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Jul19 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

18 Jul 19 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

25°high

28km/h · peak gust

13%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

21% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 887 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.7% of the area of London (42 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

Mafikeng where it started

4,245 ha reached on 17 Jul

1.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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	Danger (FWI)
18 Jul	24.7 °C	13 %	22 km/h	High 37
19 Jul	24.1 °C	16 %	28 km/h	High 37
20 Jul after	23.6 °C	17 %	23 km/h	High 37
21 Jul after	24.8 °C	11 %	20 km/h	High 38
22 Jul after	24.4 °C	20 %	44 km/h	Very high 47
23 Jul after	22.6 °C	28 %	36 km/h	Very high 39
24 Jul after	20.4 °C	21 %	32 km/h	High 37
25 Jul after	21.2 °C	29 %	23 km/h	High 31
26 Jul after	22.3 °C	29 %	25 km/h	High 30
27 Jul after	21.9 °C	27 %	26 km/h	High 30
28 Jul after	23.0 °C	24 %	19 km/h	High 30
29 Jul after	21.8 °C	31 %	46 km/h	Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 11 Jul 2026

After · 26 Jul 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 17 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 74 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 38: 2.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak74 µg/m³

Days over the guideline5 days

PM1076 µg/m³

Optical depth0.23

WHO 15

16171819202122

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 · 88Every 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 South Africa ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mafikeng fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 July 2026 and 19 July 2026: 2 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 4,221 hectares (42.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mafikeng (4,245 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 24.7 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of South Africa (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.

Emergency number: 10177 · 112

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 10177 · 112.

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. 88 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.

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 ADM3 (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