How long did the Xá-Muteba fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 May 2026 to 21 June 2026 (33 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 May 2026 to 15 June 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,657 hectares (126.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Xá-Muteba (12,747 ha, 0.9 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.4 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, class High.

Where does this data come from?

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

AO · Angola · 2026-05-20 → 2026-06-21

Xá-Muteba fire, 20 May 2026 Xá-Muteba

Out · last detection 21 Jun 2026, 11:56 UTC

The fire started on 20 May 2026 in Xá-Muteba, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 33 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,657 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 56th largest in Lunda Norte since 2016 (of 411 with a page). Number 117 in Angola in 2026, of 487.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Xá-Muteba · 2026 Xá-Muteba · 2026 Xá-Muteba · 2019 Xá-Muteba · 2016

Burnt area: 12,657ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 33days; 20 May 2026 – 21 Jun 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 20 May; 2026
Heat detections: 398; in a single hotspot: 153 MW
Danger at start: 13; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 109MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 May21 Jun

Play back 21 Jun 2026

How it evolved, day by day

20 May 25 May 30 May 3 Jun 4 Jun 9 Jun 14 Jun 19 Jun

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

The weather it burned in

33°high

40km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,852 ha in 2016, 1,411 ha in 2017, 3,394 ha in 2018, 4,152 ha in 2019, 2,203 ha in 2020, 1,404 ha in 2021, 4,685 ha in 2022, 2,348 ha in 2023, 1,179 ha in 2024, 1,318 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 11,012 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 8% of the area of London (127 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

Xá-Muteba where it started

12,747 ha reached on 20 May

0.9 %

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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	Danger (FWI)
20 May	31.3 °C	39 %	27 km/h	Moderate 13
21 May	32.2 °C	35 %	23 km/h	Moderate 13
22 May	32.7 °C	29 %	24 km/h	Moderate 16
23 May	32.1 °C	34 %	27 km/h	Moderate 17
24 May	33.0 °C	28 %	30 km/h	Moderate 19
25 May	32.4 °C	33 %	40 km/h	High 21
26 May	32.3 °C	33 %	38 km/h	High 22
27 May	32.0 °C	26 %	33 km/h	Moderate 21
28 May	31.3 °C	26 %	28 km/h	Moderate 20
29 May	31.7 °C	28 %	30 km/h	High 22
30 May	32.0 °C	29 %	26 km/h	High 22
31 May	31.6 °C	25 %	28 km/h	High 23
1 Jun	31.3 °C	26 %	32 km/h	High 24
2 Jun	31.8 °C	29 %	26 km/h	High 24
3 Jun	31.8 °C	27 %	24 km/h	High 24
4 Jun	31.3 °C	25 %	18 km/h	High 24
5 Jun	31.4 °C	25 %	18 km/h	High 24
6 Jun	32.6 °C	27 %	24 km/h	High 25
7 Jun	33.4 °C	25 %	22 km/h	High 27
8 Jun	33.1 °C	28 %	32 km/h	High 29
9 Jun	32.9 °C	20 %	31 km/h	High 30
10 Jun	32.9 °C	21 %	27 km/h	High 31
11 Jun	33.1 °C	24 %	24 km/h	High 33
12 Jun	32.6 °C	24 %	29 km/h	High 33
13 Jun	30.8 °C	20 %	33 km/h	High 34
14 Jun	31.2 °C	22 %	27 km/h	High 33
15 Jun	31.2 °C	27 %	22 km/h	High 32
16 Jun	32.0 °C	30 %	16 km/h	High 30
17 Jun	31.6 °C	33 %	23 km/h	High 29
18 Jun	29.3 °C	42 %	24 km/h	High 25
19 Jun	29.9 °C	42 %	28 km/h	High 23
20 Jun	32.3 °C	35 %	20 km/h	High 25
21 Jun	32.3 °C	38 %	22 km/h	High 25
22 Jun after	31.6 °C	34 %	26 km/h	High 25
23 Jun after	31.8 °C	29 %	31 km/h	High 28
24 Jun after	32.1 °C	25 %	23 km/h	High 31
25 Jun after	31.8 °C	25 %	26 km/h	High 32
26 Jun after	31.7 °C	26 %	26 km/h	High 32
27 Jun after	31.4 °C	30 %	23 km/h	High 32
28 Jun after	30.6 °C	35 %	26 km/h	High 31
29 Jun after	32.2 °C	29 %	26 km/h	High 31
30 Jun after	32.0 °C	28 %	19 km/h	High 31
1 Jul after	32.3 °C	25 %	18 km/h	High 32

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 13 May 2026

After · 28 Jun 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 14 June 2026 the air beside the fire reached 83 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 43: 2.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak83 µg/m³

Days over the guideline16 days

PM1084 µg/m³

Optical depth0.71

WHO 15

232425262728293031123456789101112131415161718

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 · 398Every 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 Angola ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Xá-Muteba fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 May 2026 to 21 June 2026 (33 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 May 2026 to 15 June 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,657 hectares (126.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Xá-Muteba (12,747 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.4 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Angola (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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 15 June 2026 → 21 June 2026.
26 October 2026 Start date: 25 May 2026 → 20 May 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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 25 May 2026 to 15 June 2026. 398 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 (Public Domain). 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.

Where it burned