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Penafiel fire, 27 July 2026 Luzim e Vila Cova, Duas Igrejas, Perozelo

Out · last detection 30 Jul 2026, 13:23 UTC

The fire started on 27 July 2026 in Duas Igrejas, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 437 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities. According to ICNF, it was detected on 27 July 2026 at 11:09 and declared extinguished on 28 July 2026.

Number 23 in Portugal in 2026, of 78.

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Burnt area
437ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
≈ 4days
27 Jul 2026 – 30 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
3
freguesias
Started on
27 Jul
2026
Heat detections
29
in a single hotspot: 40 MW
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index
Average daily power
100MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Jul30 Jul
30 Jul 2026

How it evolved, day by day

27 Jul 2026 · 235 MW · 9 28 Jul 2026 · 113 MW · 13 29 Jul 2026 · 6 MW · 1 30 Jul 2026 · 44 MW · 6
27 Jul 28 Jul 29 Jul 30 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
37km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 19 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

17% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 28 ha in 2020, 47 ha in 2022.

What happened to each town

  1. Luzim e Vila Cova 1,539 inhabitants · fire reached the centre
    316 ha reached on 27 Jul
    29 %
  2. Duas Igrejas fire reached the centre where it started
    100 ha reached on 27 Jul
    12 %
  3. Perozelo 1,317 inhabitants · 0.8 km from the centre
    22 ha reached on 28 Jul
    5.6 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official 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.

What burned

  • Scrub and transitional woodland95 %
  • Agricultural areas3.9 %

Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area1.9 ha
Residents≈ 60

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.9 hectares of built-up land and about 60 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

Official record

According to ICNF, this fire started on 27 July 2026 and burned 459 ha (the satellite measured 437 ha).

ICNF (Instituto da Conservação da Natureza e das Florestas). This is the agency’s operational record: its figures may be revised when the year’s statistics are closed.

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)
27 Jul 37.2 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
28 Jul 31.0 °C 45 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
29 Jul 26.5 °C 55 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
30 Jul 24.8 °C 52 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
31 Jul after 27.0 °C 51 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
1 Aug after 29.0 °C 49 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
2 Aug after 26.0 °C 58 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
3 Aug after 25.2 °C 64 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
4 Aug after 25.0 °C 63 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
5 Aug after 26.7 °C 47 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
6 Aug after 28.3 °C 45 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
7 Aug after 28.5 °C 48 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
8 Aug after 28.8 °C 49 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
9 Aug after 27.0 °C 49 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 22

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Jul 2026
After · 6 Aug 2026

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 30 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 164 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 64: 4.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak164 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM10176 µg/m³
Optical depth0.57
2526272829303112
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 · 29Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Portugal ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Penafiel fire last?
The official perimeter only gives the start date (27 July 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 30 July 2026 (4 days from 27 July 2026), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate. According to ICNF, it was detected on 27 July 2026 at 11:09 and declared extinguished on 28 July 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 437 hectares (4.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Luzim e Vila Cova (316 ha, 29 %); Duas Igrejas (100 ha, 12 %); Perozelo (22 ha, 5.6 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Duas Igrejas and reached its centre: the point marking it was inside the burnt area or less than 500 metres from it. That does not mean houses burned.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Portugal (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: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

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.

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.

Report an error
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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 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • The official perimeter has no end date: the end is the last day with VIIRS detections inside the perimeter before a gap of more than 10 days (150 days at most), so it is approximate. 29 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with ICNF: 459 official ha against 437 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
  • 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 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 ADM3 (CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication). 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.