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Svilengrad fire, 8 September 2025 Свиленград · Svilengrad

Out · last detection 9 Sept 2025, 11:06 UTC

The fire started on 8 September 2025 in Svilengrad, Bulgaria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,106 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 11th largest in Haskovo since 2016 (of 46 with a page). Number 6 in Bulgaria in 2025, of 44.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Svilengrad · 2024Svilengrad · 2023Harmanli · 2024Harmanli · 2025

Burnt area
1,106ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
8 Sept 2025 – 9 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
8 Sept
2025
Heat detections
26
in a single hotspot: 37 MW
Danger at start
27
High · FWI index
Average daily power
135MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Sept9 Sept
9 Sept 2025

How it evolved, day by day

8 Sept 2025 · 140 MW · 9 9 Sept 2025 · 131 MW · 17
8 Sept 9 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

29°high
35km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.6 mm on 12 Sept.

This area had burned before

4% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 41 ha in 2024.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.7% of the area of London (11 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. Svilengrad Свиленград 19,993 inhabitants · 13.7 km from the centre where it started
    1,108 ha reached on 8 Sept
    1.6 %

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

  • Scrub and transitional woodland74 %
  • Agricultural areas25 %
  • Other natural land0.7 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 100 %

  • ZEPA + LIC Sakar BG0000212 · BG0002021

Natura 2000 sites (European Environment Agency, 2024 release) crossed by the perimeter.

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

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)
8 Sept 27.2 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
9 Sept 29.2 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
10 Sept after 30.0 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
11 Sept after 29.3 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
12 Sept after 27.2 °C 47 % 31 km/h 6.6 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Sept 2025
After · 16 Sept 2025

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 11 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak20 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1027 µg/m³
Optical depth0.48
6789101112
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 · 26Every 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 Bulgaria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Svilengrad fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 8 September 2025 and 9 September 2025: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,106 hectares (11.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Svilengrad (1,108 ha, 1.6 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Svilengrad and came within 13.7 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 29.2 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Bulgaria (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 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.

Report an error
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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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 26 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.