Nwoya fire, 3 January 2026 Nwoya
The fire started on 3 January 2026 in Nwoya, Uganda, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,324 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the largest fire in Northern Region since 2016 (of 1377 with a page). The largest in Uganda in 2026, of 270.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Nwoya · 2016Nwoya · 2022Nwoya · 2017Nwoya · 2025
- Burnt area
- 16,324ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 24days
- 3 Jan 2026 – 26 Jan 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 3 Jan
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 493
- in a single hotspot: 236 MW
- Danger at start
- 35
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 213MW
- 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 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.7 mm on 27 Jan.
This area had burned before
85% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 8,370 ha in 2016, 7,028 ha in 2017, 625 ha in 2018, 2,499 ha in 2019, 2,046 ha in 2020, 2,677 ha in 2021, 5,239 ha in 2022, 2,317 ha in 2023, 458 ha in 2024, 3,597 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 13,952 ha that had burned before.
- 4,014 ha Nwoya fire, January 2016 10,951 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,580 ha Nwoya fire, January 2022 4,253 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,513 ha Nwoya fire, January 2017 4,037 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,236 ha Nwoya fire, January 2025 2,344 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,966 ha Nwoya fire, February 2023 2,079 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,829 ha Nwoya fire, December 2016 3,137 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,429 ha Nwoya fire, February 2021 6,881 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,304 ha Nwoya fire, January 2022 2,764 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
-
Nwoya where it started16,434 ha reached on 3 Jan3.9 %
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 were about 1.2 hectares of built-up land and about 250 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 Jan | 36.8 °C | 19 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 4 Jan | 36.1 °C | 23 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 5 Jan | 35.4 °C | 24 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 6 Jan | 35.3 °C | 20 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 7 Jan | 37.2 °C | 15 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 8 Jan | 36.9 °C | 15 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 9 Jan | 36.2 °C | 15 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 10 Jan | 35.0 °C | 21 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 11 Jan | 34.3 °C | 31 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 12 Jan | 34.3 °C | 29 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 13 Jan | 35.5 °C | 20 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 14 Jan | 37.8 °C | 14 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 15 Jan | 37.9 °C | 11 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 16 Jan | 36.9 °C | 17 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 17 Jan | 37.3 °C | 15 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 18 Jan | 36.9 °C | 21 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 19 Jan | 35.6 °C | 28 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 20 Jan | 37.0 °C | 23 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 21 Jan | 38.6 °C | 14 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 22 Jan | 38.0 °C | 12 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 23 Jan | 38.6 °C | 12 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 24 Jan | 37.9 °C | 14 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 25 Jan | 39.4 °C | 15 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 26 Jan | 36.1 °C | 23 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 27 Jan after | 35.6 °C | 29 % | 30 km/h | 2.7 mm | Moderate 20 |
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 15 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 83 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 56: 3.7 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 · 493Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 10,951 haNwoya21 January 2016 · 26 days · 5 km away
- 6,881 haNwoya4 February 2021 · 7 days · 26 km away
- 13,858 haKibanda9 February 2016 · 10 days · 31 km away
- 10,795 haBuliisa6 January 2019 · 9 days · 34 km away
- 41,220 haKibanda2 January 2017 · 15 days · 37 km away
- 9,718 haBuliisa3 January 2026 · 17 days · 37 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Nwoya fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 January 2026 to 26 January 2026 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 January 2026 to 22 January 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 16,324 hectares (163.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Nwoya (16,434 ha, 3.9 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 39.4 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Uganda (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: 999 · 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 22 January 2026 → 26 January 2026.
- Start date: 6 January 2026 → 3 January 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; 6 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 6 January 2026 to 22 January 2026. 493 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 geoBoundaries ADM2 (Public Domain). 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.