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Mpongwe fire, 25 July 2026 Mpongwe

Out · last detection 9 Aug 2026, 11:38 UTC

The fire started on 25 July 2026 in Mpongwe, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,031 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 36th largest in Copperbelt since 2016 (of 84 with a page). Number 339 in Zambia in 2026, of 610.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mpongwe · 2016Lufwanyama · 2026Mpongwe · 2019Mpongwe · 2026

Burnt area
4,031ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
25 Jul 2026 – 8 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
25 Jul
2026
Heat detections
73
in a single hotspot: 116 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
47MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Jul8 Aug
9 Aug 2026

How it evolved, day by day

25 Jul 2026 · 6 MW · 1 27 Jul 2026 · 10 MW · 1 28 Jul 2026 · 39 MW · 9 29 Jul 2026 · 6 MW · 1 30 Jul 2026 · 108 MW · 6 31 Jul 2026 · 66 MW · 12 1 Aug 2026 · 2 MW · 3 2 Aug 2026 · 290 MW · 16 5 Aug 2026 · 11 MW · 3 6 Aug 2026 · 41 MW · 6 7 Aug 2026 · 13 MW · 4 8 Aug 2026 · 15 MW · 3 9 Aug 2026 · 1 MW · 1
25 Jul 28 Jul 30 Jul 1 Aug 2 Aug 5 Aug 7 Aug 9 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

28°high
44km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

94% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,679 ha in 2016, 965 ha in 2017, 1,401 ha in 2018, 483 ha in 2020, 1,036 ha in 2021, 1,700 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,775 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.5% of the area of London (40 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. Mpongwe where it started
    4,055 ha reached on 23 Jul
    0.5 %

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)
25 Jul 25.3 °C 34 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
26 Jul 24.0 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
27 Jul 25.0 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
28 Jul 26.6 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
29 Jul 27.6 °C 24 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
30 Jul 27.4 °C 24 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
31 Jul 26.3 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Aug 25.0 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
2 Aug 24.2 °C 26 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Aug 25.5 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
4 Aug 26.6 °C 24 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
5 Aug 26.5 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
6 Aug 26.8 °C 24 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Aug 28.0 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
8 Aug 27.0 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
9 Aug after 28.4 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Aug after 28.7 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
11 Aug after 28.8 °C 30 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
12 Aug after 28.2 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
13 Aug after 24.9 °C 41 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
14 Aug after 21.7 °C 47 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
15 Aug after 24.9 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
16 Aug after 24.9 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Aug after 26.4 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Aug after 27.6 °C 18 % 35 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 · 18 Jul 2026
After · 15 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 10 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 52 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 34: 2.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak52 µg/m³
Days over the guideline15 days
PM1055 µg/m³
Optical depth0.88
2324252627282930311234567891011
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 · 73Every 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 Zambia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mpongwe fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 25 July 2026 and 8 August 2026: 15 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 4,031 hectares (40.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mpongwe (4,055 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 28.0 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 73 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 (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.