How long did the Sabugal fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (7 July 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 8 July 2026 (2 days from 7 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 7 July 2026 at 15:21 and declared extinguished on 8 July 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 498 hectares (5.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Bendada (442 ha, 13 %); Benespera (54 ha, 3.0 %); Maçainhas (3 ha, 0.2 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The fire started in Bendada and came within 1.8 km of its centre. 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.

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.

PT · Portugal · 2026-07-07 → 2026-07-08

Sabugal fire, July 2026 Bendada, Benespera, Maçainhas

Out · last detection 8 Jul 2026, 02:11 UTC

The fire started on 7 July 2026 in Bendada, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 498 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities. According to ICNF, it was detected on 7 July 2026 at 15:21 and declared extinguished on 8 July 2026.

It is the 7th largest in Sabugal since 2016 (of 11 with a page). Number 18 in Portugal in 2026, of 86.

The power measured by the satellite is low (20.4 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…

Suggestions: Guarda · 2018 Sabugal · 2025 Serra da Estrela · 2022 Guarda · 2017

Burnt area: 498ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: ≈ 2days; 7 Jul 2026 – 8 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit: 3; freguesias
Started on: 7 Jul; 2026
Heat detections: 6; in a single hotspot: 20 MW
Average daily power: 43MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Jul8 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

8 Jul 2026 · 43 MW · 6

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

This area had burned before

18% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 65 ha in 2018, 12 ha in 2019, 12 ha in 2025.

What happened to each town

Bendada 473 inhabitants · 1.8 km from the centre where it started

442 ha reached on 8 Jul

13 %
Benespera 281 inhabitants · 2.4 km from the centre

54 ha reached on 8 Jul

3.0 %
Maçainhas 312 inhabitants · 2.8 km from the centre

3 ha reached on 8 Jul

0.2 %

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 land82 %
Agricultural areas18 %

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

Official record

According to ICNF, this fire started on 7 July 2026 and burned 479 ha (the satellite measured 498 ha).

Sabugal Bendada 7 July 2026 · 15:21 479 ha · extinguished on 8 July 2026 · cause: arson

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.

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 30 Jun 2026

After · 15 Jul 2026

Before After

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 5 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 96 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 44: 3.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak96 µg/m³

Days over the guideline1 day

PM10123 µg/m³

Optical depth0.77

WHO 15

5678910

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 · 6Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Portugal ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sabugal fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (7 July 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 8 July 2026 (2 days from 7 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 7 July 2026 at 15:21 and declared extinguished on 8 July 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 498 hectares (5.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Bendada (442 ha, 13 %); Benespera (54 ha, 3.0 %); Maçainhas (3 ha, 0.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The fire started in Bendada and came within 1.8 km of its centre. 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.
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

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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. 6 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
Compared with ICNF: 479 official ha against 498 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.

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.

Where it burned