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ZM · Zambia

Wildfires in Central

Central, Zambia: 431 fires with a page have entered 10 of its 12 districts since 2016, burning 2,748,244 hectares inside the region. The largest was Chitambo in 1 September 2025, with 62,957 hectares inside the region. Fire danger today: extreme (FWI 54).

Only fires of 3,000 ha or more get an entry: smaller ones are not in the lists or the totals on this page.

These figures leave out 2 provisional pages, seen only as heat detections and still without a perimeter. They appear in the lists, marked.

hectares burned
2,748,244ha
Since 2016
Of the region
25%
111,027 km²
fires
431
Since 2016
municipalities with fire
10
of 12
Largest fire
62,957ha
Chitambo · 1 September 2025
Inhabitants
—

Fire danger, today and the coming days

FWI at the region centre, from the Open-Meteo forecast
  1. Fri 23 Extreme 38° · 17 % · 42 km/h
  2. Sat 24 Extreme 34° · 21 % · 55 km/h
  3. Sun 25 Very high 33° · 24 % · 50 km/h
  4. Mon 26 Very high 34° · 23 % · 45 km/h
  5. Tue 27 Very high 35° · 21 % · 36 km/h
  6. Wed 28 Very high 36° · 13 % · 42 km/h
  7. Thu 29 Very high 36° · 20 % · 43 km/h
  8. Fri 30 Very high 34° · 20 % · 42 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. Mumbwa 949,224 ha · 48 %
  2. Itezhi-Tezhi 754,403 ha · 48 %
  3. Chitambo 677,658 ha · 56 %
  4. Serenje 223,292 ha · 19 %
  5. Luano 51,018 ha · 5.5 %
  6. Ngabwe 45,121 ha · 6.2 %
  7. Chibombo 34,187 ha · 4.1 %
  8. Mkushi 7,192 ha · 0.8 %
  9. Kapiri Mposhi 4,859 ha · 0.5 %
  10. Kabwe 4,411 ha · 2.8 %

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
2026113785,477 Chitambo 41,079 ha
202538291,848 Chitambo 62,957 ha
202423158,405 Itezhi-Tezhi 26,895 ha
202334173,851 Chitambo 21,146 ha
202232220,198 Itezhi-Tezhi 34,099 ha
202128184,010 Chitambo 36,056 ha
202041236,253 Chitambo 25,136 ha
201939222,599 Itezhi-Tezhi 21,270 ha
201823122,764 Chitambo 25,433 ha
201732194,793 Mufumbwe 24,176 ha
201630161,167 Chitambo 18,989 ha

All fires in Central · 433

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/Zambia Data Hub (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing both. The forecast is from Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0).