How long did the Mukwe fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 August 2026 to 2 September 2026 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 August 2026 to 26 August 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,438 hectares (24.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mukwe (1,730 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.5 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Namibia (OCHA COD-AB). It is not an official report.

NA · Namibia · 2026-08-17 → 2026-09-02

Mukwe fire, 17 August 2026 Mukwe

Out · last detection 1 Sept 2026, 12:46 UTC

The fire started on 17 August 2026 in Mukwe, Namibia, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,438 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 285th largest in Kavango East since 2016 (of 394 with a page). Number 116 in Namibia in 2026, of 156.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mukwe · 2025 Rivungo · 2017 Rivungo · 2021 Rivungo · 2021

Burnt area: 2,438ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 17days; 17 Aug 2026 – 2 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; constituencies
Started on: 17 Aug; 2026
Heat detections: 28; in a single hotspot: 56 MW
Danger at start: 36; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 27MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Aug2 Sept

Play back 1 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

17 Aug 22 Aug 26 Aug 31 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

34°high

44km/h · peak gust

13%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

66% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 265 ha in 2017, 330 ha in 2019, 43 ha in 2021, 36 ha in 2023, 1,004 ha in 2024, 428 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,610 ha that had burned before.

225 ha Mukwe fire, September 2025 2,117 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.5% of the area of London (24 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

Mukwe where it started

1,730 ha reached on 17 Aug

0.3 %

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
17 Aug	26.6 °C	18 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
18 Aug	29.2 °C	15 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
19 Aug	30.3 °C	13 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
20 Aug	30.5 °C	18 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
21 Aug	29.8 °C	19 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
22 Aug	30.0 °C	19 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
23 Aug	31.5 °C	17 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
24 Aug	31.2 °C	18 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
25 Aug	30.2 °C	22 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
26 Aug	30.8 °C	17 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
27 Aug	30.1 °C	17 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
28 Aug	28.5 °C	19 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
29 Aug	28.1 °C	19 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
30 Aug	30.7 °C	21 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
31 Aug	32.4 °C	23 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
1 Sept	33.5 °C	19 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
2 Sept	32.8 °C	17 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
3 Sept after	33.2 °C	20 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
4 Sept after	33.2 °C	14 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
5 Sept after	33.8 °C	17 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
6 Sept after	32.3 °C	35 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
7 Sept after	32.8 °C	31 %	35 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 40
8 Sept after	32.1 °C	25 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
9 Sept after	29.7 °C	29 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
10 Sept after	29.1 °C	23 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
11 Sept after	30.3 °C	20 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
12 Sept after	32.6 °C	18 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 10 Aug 2026

After · 9 Sept 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 26 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 30 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 23: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak30 µg/m³

Days over the guideline4 days

PM1031 µg/m³

Optical depth0.37

WHO 15

151617181920212223242526272829

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 · 28Every 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

All fires in Namibia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mukwe fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 August 2026 to 2 September 2026 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 August 2026 to 26 August 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,438 hectares (24.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mukwe (1,730 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.5 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Namibia (OCHA COD-AB). 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 26 August 2026 → 2 September 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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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?

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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 17 August 2026 to 26 August 2026. 28 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 OCHA COD-AB (Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA)) (Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY-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