How long did the Nikopol fire last?

Copernicus dates it between 20 July 2026 and 20 July 2026: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 141 hectares (1.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Nikopol (141 ha, 0.1 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The closest fire to a town centre came within 2.3 km of Nikopol. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 30.0 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 19 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 16, class Moderate.

Where does this data come from?

From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ukraine (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

UA · Ukraine · 2026-07-20 → 2026-07-20

Nikopol fire, July 2026 Нікополь · Nikopol

Out · last detection 20 Jul 2026, 11:28 UTC

The fire started on 20 July 2026 in Nikopol, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 141 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 122th largest in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast since 2016 (of 183 with a page). Number 677 in Ukraine in 2026, of 984.

The power measured by the satellite is low (13.4 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area: 141ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 1day; 20 Jul 2026 – 20 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 20 Jul; 2026
Heat detections: 5; in a single hotspot: 13 MW
Danger at start: 16; Moderate · FWI index
Energy released: 42MW; sum of detected power

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Jul20 Jul

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

30°high

19km/h · peak gust

30%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 10.4 mm on 28 Jul.

This area had burned before

60% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 49 ha in 2023, 15 ha in 2024, 67 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 85 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

Nikopol Нікополь 105,160 inhabitants · 2.3 km from the town where it started

141 ha reached on 20 Jul

0.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official 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.

What burned

Other natural land72 %
Artificial surfaces18 %
Agricultural areas7.8 %
Mixed forest2.8 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

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)
20 Jul	30.0 °C	30 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
21 Jul after	28.0 °C	49 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
22 Jul after	27.4 °C	36 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
23 Jul after	23.6 °C	47 %	29 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 18
24 Jul after	22.0 °C	50 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
25 Jul after	27.0 °C	41 %	34 km/h	0.6 mm	High 22
26 Jul after	27.6 °C	32 %	27 km/h	0.2 mm	High 22
27 Jul after	28.6 °C	33 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
28 Jul after	24.9 °C	55 %	45 km/h	10.4 mm	Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 13 Jul 2026

After · 27 Jul 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 22 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 27 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak27 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1032 µg/m³

Optical depth0.60

WHO 15

181920212223

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 · 5Every 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 Ukraine ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Nikopol fire last?: Copernicus dates it between 20 July 2026 and 20 July 2026: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 141 hectares (1.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Nikopol (141 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The closest fire to a town centre came within 2.3 km of Nikopol. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 30.0 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 19 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 16, class Moderate.
Where does this data come from?: From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ukraine (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.

Emergency number: 101 · 112

ДСНС · State Emergency Service ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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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We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 101 · 112.

Where this data comes from

The perimeter and land cover come from the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), measured on MODIS and Sentinel-2 imagery and published under CC BY 4.0. 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 (Public Domain). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from each country’s official figure.

Where it burned