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CG · Republic of the Congo · –

Mayama fire, 15 June 2026 Mayama

Out · last detection 19 Jun 2026, 23:38 UTC

The fire started on 15 June 2026 in Mayama, Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,702 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 41 in Republic of the Congo in 2026, of 360.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Compare with…
Burnt area
2,702ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
15 Jun 2026 – 19 Jun 2026
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
15 Jun
2026
Heat detections
26
in a single hotspot: 38 MW
Danger at start
14
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
63MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Jun19 Jun
19 Jun 2026

How it evolved, day by day

15 Jun 2026 · 91 MW · 10 16 Jun 2026 · 16 MW · 6 17 Jun 2026 · 143 MW · 9 19 Jun 2026 · 2 MW · 1
15 Jun 16 Jun 17 Jun 19 Jun

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

31°high
29km/h · peak gust
51%lowest humidity

It had gone 20 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,574 ha in 2016, 946 ha in 2017, 811 ha in 2019, 458 ha in 2020, 50 ha in 2021, 1,675 ha in 2023, 39 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,655 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.7% of the area of London (27 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. Mayama where it started
    2,719 ha reached on 15 Jun
    0.4 %

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.

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)
15 Jun 29.9 °C 54 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
16 Jun 29.1 °C 56 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
17 Jun 31.0 °C 51 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
18 Jun 29.7 °C 58 % 23 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 13
19 Jun 30.1 °C 60 % 24 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 13
20 Jun after 30.8 °C 55 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 14
21 Jun after 27.5 °C 65 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
22 Jun after 28.9 °C 55 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
23 Jun after 31.1 °C 52 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
24 Jun after 31.6 °C 49 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
25 Jun after 32.1 °C 50 % 24 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 14
26 Jun after 27.3 °C 62 % 26 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 14
27 Jun after 30.3 °C 50 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
28 Jun after 29.9 °C 53 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
29 Jun after 29.8 °C 56 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Jun 2026
After · 26 Jun 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 18 June 2026 the air beside the fire reached 61 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 48: 3.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak61 µg/m³
Days over the guideline9 days
PM1064 µg/m³
Optical depth1.03
13 Jun15 Jun17 Jun19 Jun21 Jun
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 · 26Every 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

Other fires nearby

All fires in Republic of the Congo

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mayama fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 June 2026 to 19 June 2026 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 June 2026 to 18 June 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,702 hectares (27.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mayama (2,719 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.0 °C, humidity dropped to 51 % and gusts hit 29 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 14, class Moderate.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Republic of the Congo (geoBoundaries ADM2). 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Name: Mvouti → Mayama.
  2. Last day with fire: 18 June 2026 → 19 June 2026.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 15 June 2026 to 18 June 2026. 26 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.

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 (Map Library 2007, nombres de Wikidata) (Public Domain). 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.