Rena fire, October 2026 Don Benito, Medellín, Villar de Rena
Satellites first detected fire on 19 October 2026 in Rena, Spain. It has been active for 10 days, with 34 heat detections and an area with fire of about 476 hectares rebuilt from them, spread across 12 municipalities.
The power measured by the satellite is low (27.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
Copernicus has not yet published the burnt perimeter, which takes a few days to measure on satellite imagery. For now the area is the one rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per pixel). When the perimeter arrives, this page picks it up on its own and keeps the same address.
Is it still active?
Satellites detected fire on 28 Oct 2026, 13:33 UTC. Everything suggests it is still burning. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
- Area with fire
- ≈ 476ha
- rebuilt from hotspots, no official perimeter yet
- Duration
- 10days
- 19 Oct 2026 – 28 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 12
- municipalities
- Started on
- 19 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 34
- in a single hotspot: 28 MW
- Danger at start
- 5
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 25MW
- 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.
What happened to each town
-
Don Benito 37,986 inhabitants · 2.7 km from the centre252 ha reached on 21 Oct0.4 %
-
Medellín 2,241 inhabitants · 2.4 km from the centre70 ha reached on 22 Oct1.1 %
-
70 ha reached on 19 Oct0.8 %
-
Rena 605 inhabitants · 1.0 km from the centre42 ha reached on 19 Oct3.9 %
-
42 ha reached on 23 Oct0.6 %
-
Campo Lugar 790 inhabitants · 3.6 km from the centre0 ha reached on 21 Oct0.0 %
-
Escurial 855 inhabitants · 1.9 km from the centre0 ha reached on 21 Oct0.0 %
-
Mengabril 504 inhabitants · 1.5 km from the centre0 ha reached on 21 Oct0.0 %
-
Valdetorres 6,665 inhabitants · 8.1 km from the centre0 ha reached on 21 Oct0.0 %
-
Abertura 362 inhabitants · 6.1 km from the centre0 ha reached on 24 Oct0.0 %
-
Madrigalejo 1,710 inhabitants · 7.3 km from the centre0 ha reached on 27 Oct0.0 %
-
Miajadas 9,396 inhabitants · 3.6 km from the centre0 ha reached on 26 Oct0.0 %
Area with fire inside each municipality, rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per VIIRS pixel). An estimate until the official perimeter arrives. 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.
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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 Oct | 22.8 °C | 47 % | 27 km/h | 0.7 mm | Very low 5 |
| 20 Oct | 19.8 °C | 40 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 9 |
| 21 Oct | 22.4 °C | 34 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 22 Oct | 23.0 °C | 33 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 23 Oct | 22.4 °C | 30 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 24 Oct | 22.5 °C | 24 % | 16 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 25 Oct | 22.9 °C | 28 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 26 Oct | 27.0 °C | 19 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 27 Oct | 22.9 °C | 31 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 28 Oct | 24.3 °C | 23 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
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 16 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 8 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 · 34Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Rena fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite, it burned from 19 October 2026 to 28 October 2026 (10 days between the first and the last detection). There is no perimeter yet to date it.
- How much area did it burn?
- There is no official perimeter yet. Heat detections rebuild about 476 hectares with fire (4.8 km²); Copernicus will publish the measured figure within days.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 12 municipalities: Don Benito (252 ha, 0.4 %); Medellín (70 ha, 1.1 %); Villar de Rena (70 ha, 0.8 %); Rena (42 ha, 3.9 %); Santa Amalia (42 ha, 0.6 %); Campo Lugar (0 ha, 0.0 %); Escurial (0 ha, 0.0 %); Mengabril (0 ha, 0.0 %); Valdetorres (0 ha, 0.0 %); Abertura (0 ha, 0.0 %); Madrigalejo (0 ha, 0.0 %); Miajadas (0 ha, 0.0 %).
- Is the Rena fire still active?
- Yes: satellites detected fire on 28 Oct 2026, 13:33 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 1.0 km of the centre of Rena, 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 27.0 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 21, class Moderate.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Spain (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 · 8 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Area: ≈ 490 → ≈ 392 ha.
- Start date: 17 October 2026 → 19 October 2026.
- Name: Don Benito → Rena.
- Area: ≈ 560 → ≈ 490 ha.
- Start date: 16 October 2026 → 17 October 2026.
- Area: ≈ 616 → ≈ 560 ha.
- Start date: 15 October 2026 → 16 October 2026.
- Area: ≈ 574 → ≈ 616 ha.
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
- No perimeter yet: the area (≈ 476 ha) is estimated by counting VIIRS pixels with fire, about 14 ha each.
- Dates of the first and last VIIRS detection of the cluster. 34 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
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 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.