Mafinga fire, 25 September 2026 Mafinga
The fire started on 25 September 2026 in Mafinga, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,577 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 204th largest in Muchinga since 2016 (of 517 with a page). Number 195 in Zambia in 2026, of 613.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 5,577ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 17days
- 25 Sept 2026 – 11 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 25 Sept
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 146
- in a single hotspot: 49 MW
- Danger at start
- 29
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 117MW
- 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 one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,374 ha in 2016, 758 ha in 2017, 1,793 ha in 2018, 1,264 ha in 2019, 2,697 ha in 2020, 2,400 ha in 2021, 2,305 ha in 2022, 3,329 ha in 2023, 1,272 ha in 2024, 5,082 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,373 ha that had burned before.
- 4,862 ha Mafinga fire, September 2025 15,016 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,329 ha Mafinga fire, September 2023 4,543 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,305 ha Mafinga fire, October 2022 5,541 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,042 ha Mafinga fire, September 2016 3,241 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,793 ha Mafinga fire, September 2018 7,197 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 177 ha Mafinga fire, October 2017 20,303 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
-
Mafinga where it started5,615 ha reached on 25 Sept1.4 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 11 hectares of built-up land and about 700 residents (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 Sept | 29.5 °C | 29 % | 47 km/h | 0.8 mm | High 29 |
| 26 Sept | 30.8 °C | 25 % | 43 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 34 |
| 27 Sept | 31.5 °C | 23 % | 37 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 34 |
| 28 Sept | 32.6 °C | 20 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 29 Sept | 32.1 °C | 16 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 30 Sept | 29.7 °C | 26 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 1 Oct | 28.0 °C | 32 % | 46 km/h | 1.1 mm | High 25 |
| 2 Oct | 27.5 °C | 42 % | 35 km/h | 11.8 mm | Very low 4 |
| 3 Oct | 26.1 °C | 52 % | 26 km/h | 6.4 mm | Very low 1 |
| 4 Oct | 29.1 °C | 31 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 5 Oct | 29.1 °C | 32 % | 48 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 6 Oct | 31.6 °C | 20 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 7 Oct | 31.8 °C | 26 % | 43 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 27 |
| 8 Oct | 32.3 °C | 20 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 9 Oct | 31.1 °C | 24 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 10 Oct | 31.0 °C | 23 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 11 Oct | 30.4 °C | 27 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 12 Oct after | 30.4 °C | 27 % | 46 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 35 |
| 13 Oct after | 29.9 °C | 32 % | 43 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 32 |
| 14 Oct after | 30.7 °C | 24 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 15 Oct after | 30.3 °C | 23 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 16 Oct after | 30.7 °C | 21 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 17 Oct after | 30.4 °C | 21 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 18 Oct after | 30.7 °C | 24 % | 42 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 35 |
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 9 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 58 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 34: 2.3 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 · 146Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 20,303 haMafinga16 October 2017 · 10 days · 10 km away
- 15,016 haMafingaSeptember 2025 · 30 days · 13 km away
- 21,909 haMafinga 6 October 2026 · 19 days · 19 km away
- 21,255 haMafinga9 October 2016 · 15 days · 19 km away
- 13,496 haMafingaOctober 2019 · 13 days · 19 km away
- 7,699 haMafinga15 October 2017 · 12 days · 29 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mafinga fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 September 2026 to 11 October 2026 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 September 2026 to 4 October 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,577 hectares (55.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mafinga (5,615 ha, 1.4 %).
- Is the Mafinga fire still active?
- No fire detections since 11 Oct 2026, 11:57 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.6 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 25 September 2026 to 4 October 2026. 146 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.
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.