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MW · Malawi

Wildfires in Central Region

Central Region, Malawi: 212 fires with a page have entered 8 of its 9 districts since 2016, burning 406,101 hectares inside the region. The largest was Nkhotakota in 5 October 2026, with 9,066 hectares inside the region. Fire danger today: very high (FWI 44).

Only fires of 1,000 ha or more get an entry: smaller ones are not in the lists or the totals on this page.

These figures leave out one provisional page, seen only as heat detections and still without a perimeter. They appear in the lists, marked.

hectares burned
406,101ha
Since 2016
Of the region
11%
35,874 km²
fires
212
Since 2016
municipalities with fire
8
of 9
Largest fire
9,066ha
Nkhotakota · 5 October 2026
Inhabitants
—

Fire danger, today and the coming days

FWI at the region centre, from the Open-Meteo forecast
  1. Fri 23 Very high 34° · 20 % · 40 km/h
  2. Sat 24 Very high 32° · 22 % · 49 km/h
  3. Sun 25 High 29° · 36 % · 49 km/h
  4. Mon 26 High 31° · 30 % · 48 km/h
  5. Tue 27 High 31° · 32 % · 39 km/h
  6. Wed 28 High 34° · 19 % · 40 km/h
  7. Thu 29 Moderate 32° · 31 % · 55 km/h
  8. Fri 30 High 30° · 23 % · 33 km/h

Burning now in the region

Click a perimeter to see which fire it is

Hectares per year

1617181920212223242526

Which months burn

JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec

Hectares burned inside the region by starting month, adding all years since 2016.

The municipalities that burned most

  1. Nkhotakota 271,043 ha · 62 %
  2. Kasungu 98,132 ha · 12 %
  3. Salima 17,405 ha · 8.1 %
  4. Lilongwe 11,443 ha · 1.8 %
  5. Dedza 3,497 ha · 0.9 %
  6. Ntcheu 3,351 ha · 1.0 %
  7. Mchinji 1,554 ha · 0.5 %
  8. Ntchisi 1,076 ha · 0.6 %

Municipalities that burn again and again

Municipalities with two or more large fires (1,000 ha or more) since 2016.

Largest recorded fires

Hectares inside the region; the fire may have burned more outside it.

Year by year

Yearfireshectares burnedLargest of the year
20261947,548 Nkhotakota 9,066 ha
20252652,663 Nkhata Bay 8,517 ha
202489,975 Salima 1,841 ha
2023711,223 Nkhata Bay 2,464 ha
20221726,246 Kasungu 3,515 ha
20211835,785 Nkhotakota 4,922 ha
20202768,803 Kasungu 8,289 ha
20192134,892 Nkhotakota 3,525 ha
20183156,425 Nkhotakota 5,575 ha
20171422,418 Nkhotakota 4,219 ha
20162541,523 Nkhotakota 4,536 ha

All fires in Central Region · 213

Newest first. The figure is the area inside the region; if the fire burned more outside, the total is shown.

Where this data comes from

Perimeters come from GWIS (Copernicus, CC BY 4.0), rebuilt from heat detections, and municipal boundaries from geoBoundaries/OpenStreetMap, Wambacher (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing both. The forecast is from Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0).