Mukwe fire, 21 August 2026 Mukwe
The fire started on 21 August 2026 in Mukwe, Namibia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,309 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 180th largest in Kavango East since 2016 (of 394 with a page). Number 76 in Namibia in 2026, of 156.
The power measured by the satellite is low (17.9 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Dirico · 2019Mukwe · 2023Dirico · 2021Mukwe · 2021
- Burnt area
- 3,309ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 5days
- 21 Aug 2026 – 25 Aug 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- constituencies
- Started on
- 21 Aug
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 32
- in a single hotspot: 18 MW
- Danger at start
- 53
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 56MW
- 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.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 140 ha in 2016, 1,492 ha in 2017, 2,111 ha in 2019, 279 ha in 2020, 1,193 ha in 2021, 622 ha in 2022, 1,606 ha in 2023, 854 ha in 2024, 7 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,312 ha that had burned before.
- 2,111 ha Dirico fire, August 2019 10,988 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,555 ha Mukwe fire, July 2023 2,260 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 856 ha Dirico fire, September 2021 12,971 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 338 ha Mukwe fire, August 2021 2,305 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
-
Mukwe where it started2,825 ha reached on 21 Aug0.5 %
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 2025Inside 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 Aug | 30.1 °C | 17 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 22 Aug | 30.2 °C | 17 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 23 Aug | 31.6 °C | 16 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 24 Aug | 31.3 °C | 18 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 25 Aug | 30.4 °C | 20 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 26 Aug after | 31.0 °C | 17 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 27 Aug after | 30.2 °C | 17 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 28 Aug after | 28.7 °C | 18 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 29 Aug after | 28.2 °C | 18 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 30 Aug after | 30.9 °C | 19 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 31 Aug after | 32.6 °C | 22 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 1 Sept after | 33.7 °C | 18 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 2 Sept after | 32.9 °C | 16 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 3 Sept after | 33.4 °C | 19 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 4 Sept after | 33.3 °C | 12 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
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 25 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 25 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.3 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 · 32Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 10,988 haDirico22 August 2019 · 23 days · 5 km away
- 12,971 haDirico5 September 2021 · 9 days · 9 km away
- 10,615 haMukwe1 September 2021 · 7 days · 14 km away
- 11,557 haMukweMay 2023 · 19 days · 28 km away
- 13,455 haDirico11 August 2017 · 10 days · 33 km away
- 17,154 haRivungo20 September 2017 · 8 days · 39 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mukwe fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 August 2026 and 25 August 2026: 5 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 3,309 hectares (33.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mukwe (2,825 ha, 0.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 31.6 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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
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.
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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 32 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.
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.