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Mufumbwe fire, 27 June 2026 Mufumbwe

Out · last detection 7 Jul 2026, 11:55 UTC

The fire started on 27 June 2026 in Mufumbwe, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,168 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 253th largest in North-Western since 2016 (of 286 with a page). Number 547 in Zambia in 2026, of 613.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mwinilunga · 2025Kalumbila · 2017Mwinilunga · 2024Kalumbila · 2025

Burnt area
3,168ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
27 Jun 2026 – 7 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
27 Jun
2026
Heat detections
69
in a single hotspot: 45 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
62MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Jun7 Jul
7 Jul 2026

How it evolved, day by day

27 Jun 2026 · 149 MW · 10 28 Jun 2026 · 104 MW · 9 29 Jun 2026 · 5 MW · 1 30 Jun 2026 · 69 MW · 9 1 Jul 2026 · 8 MW · 2 2 Jul 2026 · 128 MW · 15 3 Jul 2026 · 26 MW · 6 7 Jul 2026 · 4 MW · 2
27 Jun 29 Jun 1 Jul 3 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
41km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 47 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

15% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 476 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

10 km
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

  1. Mufumbwe where it started
    3,180 ha reached on 21 Jun
    0.2 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area1.5 ha
Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.5 hectares of built-up land and about 150 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)
27 Jun 25.8 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
28 Jun 26.7 °C 27 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
29 Jun 26.6 °C 30 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
30 Jun 27.3 °C 29 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 Jul 28.6 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
2 Jul 29.5 °C 25 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
3 Jul 28.7 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
4 Jul 27.8 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Jul 27.2 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
6 Jul 25.9 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Jul 25.4 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
8 Jul after 26.0 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Jul after 26.5 °C 31 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Jul after 27.9 °C 25 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
11 Jul after 28.4 °C 24 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Jul after 28.5 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Jul after 28.5 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Jul after 27.7 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Jul after 27.4 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
16 Jul after 26.4 °C 18 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Jul after 26.3 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Jun 2026
After · 14 Jul 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 9 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 53 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 30: 2.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak53 µg/m³
Days over the guideline10 days
PM1055 µg/m³
Optical depth0.44
25262728293012345678910
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 · 69Every 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 Mufumbwe fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 June 2026 and 7 July 2026: 11 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 3,168 hectares (31.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mufumbwe (3,180 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.5 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, class Very 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 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.

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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. 69 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 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.