Popasna fire, May 2026 Попаснянський район · Popasna, Novoaidar
The fire started on 22 May 2026 in Popasna, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 437 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 202th largest in Luhansk Oblast since 2016 (of 909 with a page). Number 171 in Ukraine in 2026, of 984.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 437ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- ≈ 4days
- 22 May 2026 – 25 May 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 22 May
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 31
- in a single hotspot: 144 MW
- Danger at start
- 9
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 276MW
- 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 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.0 mm on 26 May.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 436 ha in 2020, 183 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 436 ha that had burned before.
What happened to each town
-
286 ha reached on 23 May0.2 %
-
151 ha reached on 24 May0.1 %
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
- Coniferous forest62 %
- Mixed forest38 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23 May | 27.7 °C | 37 % | 19 km/h | 1.2 mm | Low 9 |
| 24 May | 25.9 °C | 43 % | 32 km/h | 0.5 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 25 May | 24.3 °C | 32 % | 36 km/h | 0.8 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 26 May after | 18.3 °C | 53 % | 68 km/h | 7.0 mm | Very low 3 |
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 23 May 2026 the air beside the fire reached 14 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 31Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 7,135 haNovoaidar Новоайдарський район6 July 2020 · 5 days · 2 km away
- 4,293 haPopasna Попаснянський районOctober 2020 · 7 days · 7 km away
- 3,400 haNovoaidar Новоайдарський район26 March 2024 · 10 days · 7 km away
- 12,789 haNovoaidar Новоайдарський районSeptember 2020 · 5 days · 9 km away
- 2,613 haNovoaidar Новоайдарський районApril 2025 · 7 days · 10 km away
- 3,888 haSlovianoserbsk Слов'яносербський районMay 2024 · 7 days · 19 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Popasna fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (23 May 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 25 May 2026 (4 days from 22 May 2026), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.
- 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 2 municipalities: Popasna (286 ha, 0.2 %); Novoaidar (151 ha, 0.1 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 28.6 km of the centre of Novoaidar, the closest of the areas it touched. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 27.7 °C, humidity dropped to 37 % and gusts hit 19 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 9, class Low.
- 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 · 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.
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: 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. 31 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.
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.