Powys fire, 26 April 2026 Powys, Ceredigion
The fire started on 26 April 2026 in Powys, United Kingdom, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 6,367 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the largest fire in Wales since 2016 (of 25 with a page). The largest in United Kingdom in 2026, of 21.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 6,367ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- ≈ 6days
- 26 Apr 2026 – 1 May 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 26 Apr
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 227
- in a single hotspot: 32 MW
- Danger at start
- 6
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 245MW
- 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 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.4 mm on 1 May.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
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
-
Powys where it started4,393 ha reached on 26 Apr0.8 %
-
1,962 ha reached on 28 Apr1.1 %
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
- Other natural land100 %
Protected area affected (EFFIS layer): 100 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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
Checked against the press
Checked on 29 September 2026We checked this page against 4 sources published once the fire was out. This is what they add:
- Also known as
- Elan Valley wildfire · Cwmystwyth wildfires · Powys wildfires
- Official area reported: 8,000 ha (the satellite measured 6,367 ha)
- Declared under control (not yet extinguished): 1 May 2026
Sources
- Elan Valley wildfire: Meet the farmers working to save their homes from fire — Cambrian News, 30 May 2026
- Elan Valley Wildfires — Welsh Country, 28 May 2026
- Elan Valley wildfires brought under control after firefighting effort — Brecon and Radnor Express, 1 May 2026
- Wildfire Map Spotlight: Elan Valley Fire, Wales — IQAir, 1 May 2026
Official figures are measured differently from satellite ones and sometimes cover only part of the fire.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Apr | 16.3 °C | 30 % | 26 km/h | 0.1 mm | Low 6 |
| 27 Apr | 16.0 °C | 49 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 7 |
| 28 Apr | 10.0 °C | 67 % | 54 km/h | 0.5 mm | Low 7 |
| 29 Apr | 15.6 °C | 33 % | 63 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 30 Apr | 18.4 °C | 36 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 1 May | 14.7 °C | 51 % | 34 km/h | 3.4 mm | Very low 1 |
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 1 May 2026 the air beside the fire reached 139 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 40: 2.7 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 · 227Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,322 haPowysMarch 2019 · 2 days · 6 km away
- 1,480 haElan Valley PowysApril 2026 · 1 day · 7 km away
- 5,018 haPowys7 April 2025 · 5 days · 8 km away
- 2,246 haCeredigion22 March 2020 · 6 days · 14 km away
- 956 haCarmarthenshire18 March 2026 · 2 days · 23 km away
- 692 haCarmarthenshire22 March 2020 · 6 days · 23 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Powys fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (29 April 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 1 May 2026 (6 days from 26 April 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 6,367 hectares (63.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Powys (4,393 ha, 0.8 %); Ceredigion (1,962 ha, 1.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 16.3 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 63 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 12, class Moderate.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of United Kingdom (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 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. 227 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Checked against news and agencies: 4 confirmed sources.
- 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 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 (Open Government Licence v3.0). 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.