Mashare fire, 21 August 2026 Mashare, Tsumkwe
The fire started on 21 August 2026 in Mashare, Namibia, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 77,077 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the largest fire in Kavango East since 2016 (of 394 with a page). Number 3 in Namibia in 2026, of 155.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 77,077ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 18days
- 21 Aug 2026 – 7 Sept 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- constituencies
- Started on
- 21 Aug
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 1,752
- in a single hotspot: 203 MW
- Danger at start
- 56
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.3GW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
77% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,293 ha in 2016, 2,433 ha in 2017, 28,659 ha in 2018, 163 ha in 2019, 12,628 ha in 2020, 131 ha in 2021, 35,239 ha in 2022, 1,424 ha in 2023, 15,418 ha in 2024, 223 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 59,198 ha that had burned before.
- 11,656 ha Mashare fire, September 2022 19,762 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 10,089 ha Tsumkwe fire, August 2018 17,069 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 8,631 ha Mashare fire, August 2018 13,827 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 8,446 ha Tsumkwe fire, September 2022 13,067 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,654 ha Mashare fire, September 2024 5,410 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,269 ha Tsumkwe fire, September 2020 6,471 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,036 ha Tsumkwe fire, September 2022 9,698 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,277 ha Tsumkwe fire, September 2022 12,800 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
-
Mashare where it started40,779 ha reached on 21 Aug4.4 %
-
36,729 ha reached on 21 Aug1.3 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 Aug | 30.8 °C | 15 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 22 Aug | 30.7 °C | 14 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 23 Aug | 31.8 °C | 15 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 24 Aug | 31.6 °C | 15 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 25 Aug | 30.7 °C | 18 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 26 Aug | 31.4 °C | 14 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 27 Aug | 30.5 °C | 14 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 28 Aug | 29.0 °C | 17 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 29 Aug | 28.4 °C | 18 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 30 Aug | 30.7 °C | 17 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 31 Aug | 32.8 °C | 16 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 1 Sept | 34.0 °C | 15 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 2 Sept | 32.4 °C | 18 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 3 Sept | 33.4 °C | 18 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 4 Sept | 30.2 °C | 12 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 5 Sept | 30.3 °C | 10 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 6 Sept | 32.2 °C | 11 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 7 Sept | 34.4 °C | 7 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 8 Sept after | 33.2 °C | 21 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 9 Sept after | 30.3 °C | 25 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 10 Sept after | 29.2 °C | 22 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 11 Sept after | 30.7 °C | 17 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 12 Sept after | 32.0 °C | 18 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 13 Sept after | 34.2 °C | 16 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 14 Sept after | 31.7 °C | 27 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 15 Sept after | 33.6 °C | 20 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 16 Sept after | 35.6 °C | 19 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 17 Sept after | 35.3 °C | 14 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
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 26 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 108 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 73: 4.8 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 · 1,752Every 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 Mashare fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 August 2026 to 7 September 2026 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 August 2026 to 7 September 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 77,077 hectares (770.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mashare (40,779 ha, 4.4 %); Tsumkwe (36,729 ha, 1.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Namibia (OCHA COD-AB). 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; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 22 August 2026 to 7 September 2026. 1,752 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.
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 OCHA COD-AB (Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA)) (Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY-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.