Seytenga fire, October 2026 Sampelga, Seytenga, Titabè
The fire started on 17 October 2026 in Seytenga, Burkina Faso, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 44,337 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.
It is the 2th largest in Liptako since 2016 (of 234 with a page). Number 2 in Burkina Faso in 2026, of 314.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 44,337ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 14days
- 17 Oct 2026 – 30 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 4
- communes
- Started on
- 17 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 618
- in a single hotspot: 49 MW
- Danger at start
- 30
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 284MW
- 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 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 130 ha in 2023, 1,569 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,549 ha that had burned before.
- 1,415 ha Dori fire, October 2025 63,851 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 154 ha Seytenga fire, November 2025 9,785 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 130 ha Seytenga fire, December 2023 3,644 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
17,997 ha reached on 19 Oct33 %
-
Seytenga where it started13,276 ha reached on 17 Oct16 %
-
11,364 ha reached on 26 Oct11 %
-
1,852 ha reached on 22 Oct0.7 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 Oct | 38.4 °C | 19 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 18 Oct | 38.1 °C | 21 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 19 Oct | 37.7 °C | 22 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 20 Oct | 38.2 °C | 17 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 21 Oct | 38.5 °C | 17 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 22 Oct | 38.2 °C | 12 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 23 Oct | 37.7 °C | 14 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 24 Oct | 38.2 °C | 14 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 25 Oct | 37.7 °C | 16 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 26 Oct | 37.3 °C | 19 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 27 Oct | 37.4 °C | 22 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 28 Oct | 37.6 °C | 22 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 29 Oct | 37.5 °C | 20 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 30 Oct | 38.8 °C | 13 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 31 Oct after | 39.0 °C | 14 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 1 Nov after | 38.7 °C | 13 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 2 Nov after | 39.9 °C | 11 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 3 Nov after | 40.4 °C | 15 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 4 Nov after | 39.6 °C | 17 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
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 17 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 37 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 31: 2.1 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 · 618Every 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 Seytenga fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 October 2026 and 30 October 2026: 14 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 44,337 hectares (443.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 4 municipalities: Sampelga (17,997 ha, 33 %); Seytenga (13,276 ha, 16 %); Titabè (11,364 ha, 11 %); Dori (1,852 ha, 0.7 %).
- Is the Seytenga fire still active?
- No fire detections since 31 Oct 2026, 01:41 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.8 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Burkina Faso (OCHA COD-AB). 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 · 6 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 24 October 2026 → 30 October 2026.
- Area: 38,179 → 43,825 ha.
- Area: 32,252 → 38,179 ha.
- Area: 12,258 → 32,252 ha.
- The page “Seytenga, 20 October 2026” has been merged into this one: it was the same fire.
- The page “Sampelga, 26 October 2026” has been merged into this one: it was the same fire.
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: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 8 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 618 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
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 OCHA COD-AB (Institut Geographique Burkina (IGB)) (Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY-IGO)). 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.