Skip to content
worldfires
CD · Congo - Kinshasa · →

Mitwaba fire, July 2026 Mitwaba

Out · last detection 18 Aug 2026, 23:16 UTC

The fire started on 21 July 2026 in Mitwaba, Congo - Kinshasa, and satellites saw it burning for 28 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,689 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 62th largest in Haut-Katanga since 2016 (of 94 with a page). Number 410 in Congo - Kinshasa in 2026, of 523.

Burnt area
5,689ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
28days
21 Jul 2026 – 17 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
21 Jul
2026
Heat detections
243
in a single hotspot: 106 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Energy released
1.3GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

18 Aug 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Jul17 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

21232425262728293031125678101112131415161718

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

The weather it burned in

33°high
46km/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

28% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 777 ha in 2016, 293 ha in 2019, 351 ha in 2022, 19 ha in 2024, 977 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,589 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mitwaba where it started
    5,738 ha reached on 17 Jul
    0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
17 Jul 28.1 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
18 Jul 28.4 °C 30 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
19 Jul 29.3 °C 27 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
20 Jul 29.8 °C 29 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
21 Jul 30.8 °C 28 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
22 Jul 30.9 °C 31 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
23 Jul 31.3 °C 35 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
24 Jul 30.7 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
25 Jul 30.7 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
26 Jul 29.9 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
27 Jul 29.3 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
28 Jul 30.1 °C 29 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
29 Jul 30.7 °C 30 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
30 Jul 30.6 °C 29 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
31 Jul 30.6 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Aug 28.6 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
2 Aug 28.7 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
3 Aug 28.8 °C 29 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
4 Aug 29.7 °C 30 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Aug 29.9 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Aug 30.6 °C 32 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Aug 30.9 °C 33 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
8 Aug 31.6 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
9 Aug 31.5 °C 34 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
10 Aug 33.0 °C 28 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
11 Aug 33.0 °C 27 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Aug 32.4 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
13 Aug 31.0 °C 30 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Aug 29.4 °C 37 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Aug 29.4 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Aug 29.5 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Aug 30.6 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
18 Aug after 31.3 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Aug after 30.8 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
20 Aug after 30.6 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
21 Aug after 30.9 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
22 Aug after 31.9 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
23 Aug after 33.3 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
24 Aug after 32.6 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
25 Aug after 31.3 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
26 Aug after 32.3 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
27 Aug after 32.8 °C 32 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
28 Aug after 31.1 °C 34 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Aug after 32.0 °C 28 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
30 Aug after 33.4 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
31 Aug after 34.3 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
1 Sept after 34.0 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
2 Sept after 33.5 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Sept after 34.2 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Jul 2026
After · 24 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 19 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 96 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 70: 4.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak96 µg/m³
Days over the guideline33 days
PM1098 µg/m³
Optical depth0.97
192021222324252627282930311234567891011121314151617181920
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 · 243Every 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 Congo - Kinshasa ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mitwaba fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 July 2026 and 17 August 2026: 28 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 5,689 hectares (56.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mitwaba (5,738 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.3 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Congo - Kinshasa (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

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?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

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.