How long did the Mbinga fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 September 2026 to 15 October 2026 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 September 2026 to 8 October 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,160 hectares (31.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mbinga (2,949 ha, 0.6 %); Nyasa (231 ha, 0.1 %).

Is the Mbinga fire still active?

No fire detections since 16 Oct 2026, 22:33 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.3 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 66 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class High.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Tanzania (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

TZ · Tanzania · 2026-09-26 → 2026-10-15

Mbinga fire, 26 September 2026 Mbinga, Nyasa

Out · last detection 16 Oct 2026, 22:33 UTC

The fire started on 26 September 2026 in Mbinga, Tanzania, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,160 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 84th largest in Ruvuma since 2016 (of 92 with a page). Number 181 in Tanzania in 2026, of 200.

The power measured by the satellite is low (26.1 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mbinga · 2026

Burnt area: 3,160ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 20days; 26 Sept 2026 – 15 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 26 Sept; 2026
Heat detections: 64; in a single hotspot: 26 MW
Danger at start: 29; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 31MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Sept15 Oct

Play back 16 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

26 Sept 27 Sept 29 Sept 4 Oct 8 Oct 13 Oct 16 Oct

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

66km/h · peak gust

29%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

32% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,007 ha in 2025.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (32 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

Mbinga where it started

2,949 ha reached on 26 Sept

0.6 %
Nyasa

231 ha reached on 28 Sept

0.1 %

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 area11 ha

Residents≈ 1,000

Inside the perimeter there were about 11 hectares of built-up land and about 1,000 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)
26 Sept	29.6 °C	35 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
27 Sept	31.0 °C	31 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
28 Sept	31.3 °C	30 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
29 Sept	30.6 °C	33 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
30 Sept	28.3 °C	41 %	44 km/h	1.8 mm	Moderate 16
1 Oct	26.7 °C	49 %	36 km/h	1.9 mm	Low 10
2 Oct	27.5 °C	48 %	39 km/h	2.0 mm	Low 8
3 Oct	28.1 °C	43 %	38 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 14
4 Oct	29.1 °C	34 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
5 Oct	28.5 °C	40 %	42 km/h	1.5 mm	Moderate 15
6 Oct	30.3 °C	33 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
7 Oct	31.0 °C	35 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
8 Oct	31.1 °C	31 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
9 Oct	30.9 °C	29 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
10 Oct	30.1 °C	34 %	46 km/h	1.0 mm	High 26
11 Oct	29.5 °C	39 %	42 km/h	1.5 mm	Moderate 21
12 Oct	29.2 °C	36 %	37 km/h	1.4 mm	Moderate 18
13 Oct	29.1 °C	39 %	51 km/h	1.0 mm	High 24
14 Oct	28.4 °C	41 %	66 km/h	0.9 mm	High 28
15 Oct	28.5 °C	37 %	58 km/h	0.3 mm	High 33
16 Oct after	29.3 °C	33 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
17 Oct after	28.8 °C	33 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
18 Oct after	29.5 °C	35 %	56 km/h	0.4 mm	High 35

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 19 Sept 2026

After · 22 Oct 2026

Before After

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 9 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 62 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 40: 2.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak62 µg/m³

Days over the guideline22 days

PM1063 µg/m³

Optical depth0.74

WHO 15

242526272829301234567891011121314151617

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 · 64Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

5,057 haMbinga26 September 2026 · 21 days · 19 km away

All fires in Tanzania ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mbinga fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 September 2026 to 15 October 2026 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 September 2026 to 8 October 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,160 hectares (31.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mbinga (2,949 ha, 0.6 %); Nyasa (231 ha, 0.1 %).
Is the Mbinga fire still active?: No fire detections since 16 Oct 2026, 22:33 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.3 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 66 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Tanzania (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.

Emergency number: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

Report an error

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112.

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 26 September 2026 to 8 October 2026. 64 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.

Where it burned