Mafinga fire, 12 October 2026 Mafinga
The fire started on 12 October 2026 in Mafinga, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,306 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 149th largest in Muchinga since 2016 (of 518 with a page). Number 130 in Zambia in 2026, of 616.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 7,306ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 13days
- 12 Oct 2026 – 24 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 12 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 125
- in a single hotspot: 37 MW
- Danger at start
- 38
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 122MW
- 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 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,092 ha in 2016, 2,843 ha in 2017, 1,814 ha in 2019, 2,741 ha in 2021, 79 ha in 2022, 3,654 ha in 2023, 4,975 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,321 ha that had burned before.
- 4,975 ha Mafinga fire, September 2025 13,807 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,092 ha Mafinga fire, October 2016 21,255 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,938 ha Mafinga fire, October 2023 3,621 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,400 ha Mafinga fire, September 2019 13,496 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 628 ha Mafinga fire, October 2021 4,756 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 44 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 started7,348 ha reached on 13 Oct1.8 %
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 14 hectares of built-up land and about 850 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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 Oct | 29.2 °C | 29 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 13 Oct | 29.0 °C | 33 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 14 Oct | 29.3 °C | 28 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 15 Oct | 28.6 °C | 30 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 16 Oct | 29.0 °C | 26 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 17 Oct | 28.8 °C | 24 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 18 Oct | 29.3 °C | 29 % | 44 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 31 |
| 19 Oct | 29.6 °C | 33 % | 33 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 29 |
| 20 Oct | 31.9 °C | 27 % | 33 km/h | 1.8 mm | High 22 |
| 21 Oct | 32.5 °C | 21 % | 42 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 36 |
| 22 Oct | 32.7 °C | 22 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 23 Oct | 33.2 °C | 13 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 24 Oct | 31.0 °C | 19 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 25 Oct after | 28.6 °C | 28 % | 58 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 26 Oct after | 29.5 °C | 30 % | 49 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 41 |
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 11 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 22 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 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 · 125Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mafinga fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 October 2026 to 24 October 2026 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 October 2026 to 18 October 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,306 hectares (73.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mafinga (7,348 ha, 1.8 %).
- Is the Mafinga fire still active?
- No fire detections since 24 Oct 2026, 11:34 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, class Extreme.
- 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 12 October 2026 to 18 October 2026. 125 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
- 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.