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Serenje fire, 18 July 2026 Serenje

Out · last detection 10 Aug 2026, 11:17 UTC

The fire started on 18 July 2026 in Serenje, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,101 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 380th largest in Central since 2016 (of 399 with a page). Number 579 in Zambia in 2026, of 617.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Serenje · 2026

Burnt area
3,101ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
18 Jul 2026 – 9 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
18 Jul
2026
Heat detections
85
in a single hotspot: 61 MW
Danger at start
28
High · FWI index
Average daily power
39MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Jul9 Aug
10 Aug 2026

How it evolved, day by day

18 Jul 2026 · 31 MW · 3 19 Jul 2026 · 25 MW · 5 20 Jul 2026 · 27 MW · 2 21 Jul 2026 · 36 MW · 6 22 Jul 2026 · 8 MW · 2 23 Jul 2026 · 145 MW · 7 24 Jul 2026 · 136 MW · 12 25 Jul 2026 · 17 MW · 1 27 Jul 2026 · 21 MW · 3 28 Jul 2026 · 84 MW · 5 29 Jul 2026 · 59 MW · 9 30 Jul 2026 · 32 MW · 6 31 Jul 2026 · 52 MW · 8 1 Aug 2026 · 17 MW · 3 2 Aug 2026 · 14 MW · 3 5 Aug 2026 · 7 MW · 1 6 Aug 2026 · 50 MW · 3 8 Aug 2026 · 9 MW · 1 9 Aug 2026 · 10 MW · 4 10 Aug 2026 · 2 MW · 1
18 Jul 21 Jul 23 Jul 24 Jul 28 Jul 31 Jul 5 Aug 9 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

26°high
54km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

47% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 698 ha in 2017, 12 ha in 2018, 513 ha in 2019, 772 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,454 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (31 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Serenje where it started
    3,120 ha reached on 18 Jul
    0.3 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS 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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area5.0 ha
Residents≈ 500

Inside the perimeter there were about 5.0 hectares of built-up land and about 500 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

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)
18 Jul 22.4 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
19 Jul 23.6 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
20 Jul 25.4 °C 27 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
21 Jul 25.6 °C 28 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
22 Jul 25.1 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Jul 24.6 °C 43 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
24 Jul 23.7 °C 42 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
25 Jul 21.6 °C 46 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
26 Jul 20.3 °C 49 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
27 Jul 22.0 °C 43 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
28 Jul 23.9 °C 32 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
29 Jul 24.0 °C 36 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
30 Jul 24.1 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
31 Jul 23.1 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
1 Aug 21.4 °C 38 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
2 Aug 21.3 °C 41 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
3 Aug 22.5 °C 38 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
4 Aug 22.8 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
5 Aug 23.5 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
6 Aug 24.1 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
7 Aug 23.9 °C 40 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
8 Aug 23.7 °C 43 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
9 Aug 26.2 °C 37 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
10 Aug after 27.8 °C 33 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
11 Aug after 27.4 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
12 Aug after 24.6 °C 43 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Aug after 19.5 °C 59 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
14 Aug after 17.6 °C 64 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
15 Aug after 21.0 °C 42 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
16 Aug after 21.7 °C 32 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
17 Aug after 22.9 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
18 Aug after 24.1 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
19 Aug after 23.7 °C 34 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 35

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Jul 2026
After · 16 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 22 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 29 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak29 µg/m³
Days over the guideline9 days
PM1031 µg/m³
Optical depth0.48
181920212223242526272829303112345
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 · 85Every 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 Zambia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Serenje fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 July 2026 to 9 August 2026 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 July 2026 to 2 August 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,101 hectares (31.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Serenje (3,120 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 26.2 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Zambia (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.

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 2 August 2026 → 9 August 2026.
  2. Start date: 20 July 2026 → 18 July 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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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 20 July 2026 to 2 August 2026. 85 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.
  • 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 comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. 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 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.