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MZ · Mozambique · →

Marávia fire, July 2026 Marávia

Out · last detection 25 Jul 2026, 11:17 UTC

The fire started on 18 July 2026 in Marávia, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,113 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 108th largest in Tete since 2016 (of 114 with a page). Number 505 in Mozambique in 2026, of 532.

Compare with…
Burnt area
3,113ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
18 Jul 2026 – 25 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
18 Jul
2026
Heat detections
65
in a single hotspot: 49 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
94MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Jul25 Jul
25 Jul 2026

How it evolved, day by day

18 Jul 2026 · 179 MW · 8 19 Jul 2026 · 112 MW · 14 20 Jul 2026 · 240 MW · 14 21 Jul 2026 · 92 MW · 10 22 Jul 2026 · 2 MW · 1 23 Jul 2026 · 3 MW · 1 25 Jul 2026 · 27 MW · 5
18 Jul 19 Jul 20 Jul 21 Jul 22 Jul 23 Jul 25 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

29°high
57km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

63% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 283 ha in 2016, 464 ha in 2017, 463 ha in 2019, 847 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,956 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (31 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. Marávia where it started
    3,128 ha reached on 17 Jul
    0.2 %

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)
17 Jul 24.1 °C 32 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Jul 25.6 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Jul 27.4 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
20 Jul 28.6 °C 20 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
21 Jul 28.8 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
22 Jul 27.4 °C 37 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
23 Jul 26.6 °C 39 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
24 Jul 27.7 °C 32 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Jul 23.4 °C 41 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Jul after 21.2 °C 47 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
27 Jul after 22.8 °C 42 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
28 Jul after 26.1 °C 32 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 Jul after 26.0 °C 35 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
30 Jul after 26.9 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
31 Jul after 25.9 °C 26 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
1 Aug after 21.8 °C 42 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
2 Aug after 23.5 °C 38 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
3 Aug after 25.5 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
4 Aug after 25.8 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
5 Aug after 26.0 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Aug after 26.8 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Aug after 26.1 °C 35 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
8 Aug after 25.7 °C 38 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Aug after 28.2 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Aug after 30.6 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 38

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Jul 2026
After · 1 Aug 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 21 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 56 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 41: 2.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak56 µg/m³
Days over the guideline7 days
PM1058 µg/m³
Optical depth0.51
16171819202122232425262728
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 · 65Every 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 Marávia fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 July 2026 and 25 July 2026: 8 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 3,113 hectares (31.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Marávia (3,128 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 28.8 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Mozambique (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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 65 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.