How long did the Ndiyona fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 August 2026 and 18 September 2026: 27 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 65,633 hectares (656.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Ndiyona (65,986 ha, 8.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 74, class Very 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 · 2026-08-23 → 2026-09-18

Ndiyona fire, 23 August 2026 Ndiyona

Out · last detection 18 Sept 2026, 23:37 UTC

The fire started on 23 August 2026 in Ndiyona, Namibia, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 65,633 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 3th largest in Kavango East since 2016 (of 394 with a page). Number 4 in Namibia in 2026, of 159.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ndiyona · 2022 Ndiyona · 2023 Ndiyona · 2016 Ndiyona · 2017

Burnt area: 65,633ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 27days; 23 Aug 2026 – 18 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; constituencies
Started on: 23 Aug; 2026
Heat detections: 1,503; in a single hotspot: 173 MW
Danger at start: 57; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 758MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Aug18 Sept

Play back 18 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

23 Aug 27 Aug 31 Aug 4 Sept 5 Sept 8 Sept 12 Sept 16 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

36°high

58km/h · peak gust

8%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 19 Sept.

This area had burned before

94% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 15,103 ha in 2016, 10,598 ha in 2017, 77 ha in 2018, 32,938 ha in 2019, 14,719 ha in 2020, 5,288 ha in 2021, 28,057 ha in 2022, 27,291 ha in 2023, 7,796 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 61,411 ha that had burned before.

5,757 ha Ndiyona fire, August 2022 59,032 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 41% of the area of London (656 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

Ndiyona where it started

65,986 ha reached on 23 Aug

8.2 %

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 area0.60 ha

Residents≈ 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.60 hectares of built-up land and about 20 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)
23 Aug	32.0 °C	15 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
24 Aug	31.6 °C	16 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
25 Aug	30.9 °C	19 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
26 Aug	31.4 °C	16 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
27 Aug	30.5 °C	16 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
28 Aug	29.1 °C	17 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
29 Aug	28.5 °C	17 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
30 Aug	31.0 °C	17 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
31 Aug	32.9 °C	19 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
1 Sept	34.3 °C	17 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
2 Sept	33.0 °C	17 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
3 Sept	33.8 °C	18 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
4 Sept	31.7 °C	12 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
5 Sept	33.1 °C	8 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
6 Sept	33.1 °C	13 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
7 Sept	33.9 °C	23 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
8 Sept	32.9 °C	22 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
9 Sept	30.6 °C	24 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
10 Sept	29.4 °C	22 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
11 Sept	30.8 °C	17 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
12 Sept	32.7 °C	18 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
13 Sept	34.6 °C	16 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
14 Sept	33.0 °C	25 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
15 Sept	34.2 °C	21 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
16 Sept	36.1 °C	18 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
17 Sept	35.5 °C	13 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
18 Sept	35.3 °C	11 %	58 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 74
19 Sept after	29.7 °C	20 %	60 km/h	2.0 mm	Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Aug 2026

After · 25 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 7 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 118 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 64: 4.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak118 µg/m³

Days over the guideline16 days

PM10120 µg/m³

Optical depth1.44

WHO 15

2122232425262728293031123456789101112131415161718192021

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 · 1,503Every 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 Ndiyona fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 August 2026 and 18 September 2026: 27 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 65,633 hectares (656.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Ndiyona (65,986 ha, 8.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 74, class Very 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 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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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,503 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