Mpika fire, 26 August 2026 Mpika
The fire started on 26 August 2026 in Mpika, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,315 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 296th largest in Muchinga since 2016 (of 518 with a page). Number 303 in Zambia in 2026, of 616.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 4,315ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 23days
- 26 Aug 2026 – 17 Sept 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 26 Aug
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 111
- in a single hotspot: 53 MW
- Danger at start
- 24
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 44MW
- 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. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 22 Sept.
This area had burned before
66% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 209 ha in 2016, 1,330 ha in 2017, 1,390 ha in 2018, 1,211 ha in 2020, 1,623 ha in 2021, 33 ha in 2022, 1,212 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,832 ha that had burned before.
- 1,365 ha Mpika fire, August 2021 3,285 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,330 ha Mpika fire, August 2017 4,437 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 6 ha Kanchibiya fire, August 2021 7,172 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
-
Mpika where it started4,336 ha reached on 26 Aug0.2 %
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.
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 Aug | 25.8 °C | 44 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 27 Aug | 24.3 °C | 49 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 28 Aug | 23.7 °C | 48 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 29 Aug | 24.7 °C | 44 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 30 Aug | 26.0 °C | 38 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 31 Aug | 26.9 °C | 37 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 1 Sept | 26.9 °C | 39 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 2 Sept | 26.3 °C | 38 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 3 Sept | 27.3 °C | 38 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 4 Sept | 29.5 °C | 31 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 5 Sept | 28.2 °C | 39 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 6 Sept | 26.6 °C | 42 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 7 Sept | 25.8 °C | 44 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 8 Sept | 23.7 °C | 42 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 9 Sept | 21.6 °C | 52 % | 53 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 28 |
| 10 Sept | 24.7 °C | 44 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 11 Sept | 26.6 °C | 40 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 12 Sept | 27.4 °C | 34 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 13 Sept | 27.1 °C | 36 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 14 Sept | 27.6 °C | 36 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 15 Sept | 27.7 °C | 36 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 16 Sept | 27.2 °C | 30 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 17 Sept | 27.0 °C | 32 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 18 Sept after | 27.1 °C | 37 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 19 Sept after | 27.2 °C | 38 % | 42 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 33 |
| 20 Sept after | 27.1 °C | 41 % | 43 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 33 |
| 21 Sept after | 27.6 °C | 41 % | 41 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 32 |
| 22 Sept after | 22.5 °C | 60 % | 45 km/h | 1.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
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 4 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 112 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 51: 3.4 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 · 111Every 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 Mpika fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 August 2026 to 17 September 2026 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 September 2026 to 11 September 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,315 hectares (43.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mpika (4,336 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 29.5 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Zambia (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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Start date: 1 September 2026 → 26 August 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.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 September 2026 to 11 September 2026. 111 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 geoBoundaries ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)). 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.