How long did the Sloviansk fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (13 May 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 23 May 2026 (11 days from 13 May 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 347 hectares (3.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Sloviansk (348 ha, 0.2 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The fire started in Sloviansk and came within 20.9 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.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 24.9 °C, humidity dropped to 34 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 11, class Low.

Where does this data come from?

From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ukraine (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

UA · Ukraine · 2026-05-13 → 2026-05-23

Sloviansk fire, 13 May 2026 Слов'янський район · Sloviansk

Out · last detection 23 May 2026, 09:52 UTC

The fire started on 13 May 2026 in Sloviansk, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 347 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 204th largest in Donetsk Oblast since 2016 (of 1004 with a page). Number 234 in Ukraine in 2026, of 984.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sloviansk · 2024 Lyman · 2024 Sloviansk · 2024 Sloviansk · 2024

Burnt area: 347ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: ≈ 11days; 13 May 2026 – 23 May 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 13 May; 2026
Heat detections: 17; in a single hotspot: 54 MW
Danger at start: 11; Low · FWI index
Average daily power: 49MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 May23 May

Play back 23 May 2026

How it evolved, day by day

13 May 20 May 21 May 22 May 23 May

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

The weather it burned in

25°high

28km/h · peak gust

34%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 13.8 mm on 17 May.

This area had burned before

8% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 27 ha in 2022.

What happened to each town

Sloviansk Слов'янський район 20.9 km from the centre where it started

348 ha reached on 13 May

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

Coniferous forest99 %
Mixed forest1.2 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

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)
13 May	24.9 °C	34 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 11
14 May	20.9 °C	43 %	40 km/h	0.6 mm	Low 11
15 May	19.5 °C	45 %	32 km/h	0.3 mm	Low 11
16 May	21.7 °C	43 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 9
17 May	23.0 °C	64 %	42 km/h	13.8 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 6 May 2026

After · 30 May 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 13 May 2026 the air beside the fire reached 23 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak23 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1029 µg/m³

Optical depth0.43

WHO 15

111213141516

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 · 17Every 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 Ukraine ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sloviansk fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (13 May 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 23 May 2026 (11 days from 13 May 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 347 hectares (3.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Sloviansk (348 ha, 0.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The fire started in Sloviansk and came within 20.9 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.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 24.9 °C, humidity dropped to 34 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 11, class Low.
Where does this data come from?: From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ukraine (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: 101 · 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

ДСНС · State Emergency Service ↗

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 101 · 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. 17 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.

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 ADM2 (Public Domain). 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