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CD · Democratic Republic of the Congo · →

Manono fire, 20 June 2026 Manono

Out · last detection 10 Jul 2026, 12:40 UTC

The fire started on 20 June 2026 in Manono, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,680 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 9th largest in Tanganyika since 2016 (of 232 with a page). Number 69 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2026, of 523.

Compare with…
Burnt area
19,680ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
20 Jun 2026 – 10 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
20 Jun
2026
Heat detections
504
in a single hotspot: 76 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
228MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Jun10 Jul
10 Jul 2026

How it evolved, day by day

20 Jun 2026 · 36 MW · 6 21 Jun 2026 · 101 MW · 20 22 Jun 2026 · 146 MW · 21 23 Jun 2026 · 123 MW · 12 24 Jun 2026 · 162 MW · 15 25 Jun 2026 · 58 MW · 9 26 Jun 2026 · 586 MW · 41 27 Jun 2026 · 375 MW · 31 28 Jun 2026 · 286 MW · 28 29 Jun 2026 · 42 MW · 6 30 Jun 2026 · 186 MW · 30 1 Jul 2026 · 387 MW · 35 2 Jul 2026 · 48 MW · 10 3 Jul 2026 · 382 MW · 22 4 Jul 2026 · 823 MW · 77 5 Jul 2026 · 177 MW · 24 6 Jul 2026 · 315 MW · 46 7 Jul 2026 · 98 MW · 21 8 Jul 2026 · 116 MW · 16 10 Jul 2026 · 123 MW · 10
20 Jun 23 Jun 26 Jun 29 Jun 2 Jul 4 Jul 5 Jul 8 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

36°high
39km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 35 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

60% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,067 ha in 2016, 4,499 ha in 2017, 3,392 ha in 2018, 2,631 ha in 2019, 1,258 ha in 2020, 412 ha in 2021, 1,221 ha in 2022, 1,515 ha in 2023, 815 ha in 2024, 1,862 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 11,850 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (197 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. Manono where it started
    19,780 ha reached on 16 Jun
    0.6 %

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 area8.0 ha
Residents≈ 4,200

Inside the perimeter there were about 8.0 hectares of built-up land and about 4,200 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)
16 Jun 33.9 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
17 Jun 34.5 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
18 Jun 34.7 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Jun 34.1 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Jun 34.2 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
21 Jun 33.1 °C 27 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
22 Jun 33.4 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
23 Jun 33.7 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
24 Jun 33.9 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
25 Jun 34.0 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Jun 34.5 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Jun 33.6 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
28 Jun 33.6 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Jun 33.8 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Jun 34.8 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
1 Jul 34.9 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
2 Jul 35.3 °C 21 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
3 Jul 35.6 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Jul 35.2 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
5 Jul 34.3 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Jul 33.4 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
7 Jul 33.2 °C 27 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Jul 34.1 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Jul 34.6 °C 26 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Jul 35.2 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
11 Jul after 35.0 °C 23 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
12 Jul after 32.4 °C 40 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
13 Jul after 34.7 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
14 Jul after 34.1 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
15 Jul after 33.4 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
16 Jul after 33.7 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Jul after 33.5 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Jul after 34.2 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Jul after 33.1 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
20 Jul after 33.8 °C 25 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Jun 2026
After · 17 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 13 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 106 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 75: 5.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak106 µg/m³
Days over the guideline24 days
PM10112 µg/m³
Optical depth1.40
1819202122232425262728293012345678910111213
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 · 504Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Manono fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 June 2026 and 10 July 2026: 21 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 19,680 hectares (196.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Manono (19,780 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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

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.

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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 504 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.