The fire race: countries by burned area

Burned area accumulated since 1 January, week by week and country by country, according to Copernicus EFFIS and GWIS estimates. In hectares, as a share of the territory or against each country's average.

In week 42 of 2026, Democratic Republic of the Congo leads with 22,427,734 ha burned. Relative to its territory, the leader is Angola, with 15.0 % burned. Compared with its average for the same weeks (since 2006), the furthest above normal is France: 6.8 times the usual.

Region

Week 42

Current year: data up to week 42; estimates are revised as new imagery arrives.

What you are seeing

Each bar is the area burned in the country from 1 January to the week shown. "% of territory" divides it by the country's area; "× average" divides it by the average of previous years for the same week, and is only computed for countries with an average of at least 5,000 ha a year and a climatology that starts once the country was covered. These are satellite estimates, not national statistics. Source: Copernicus EFFIS (Europe, Middle East and North Africa) and GWIS (rest of the world), weekly series; data retrieved on 25 October 2026.

Ranking in week 42 of 2026

#	Country	hectares	% of territory	× average
1	Democratic Republic of the Congo	22,427,734	9.89 %	×0.5
2	Angola	18,658,275	15.0 %	×0.5
3	Australia	18,093,129	2.35 %	×0.7
4	Brazil	10,661,394	1.28 %	×0.4
5	Zambia	10,650,540	14.3 %	×0.5
6	Mozambique	8,590,456	10.9 %	×0.5
7	Indonesia	8,294,856	4.38 %	×2.6
8	Russia	7,685,106	0.47 %	×0.5
9	South Sudan	7,530,513	11.9 %	×0.8
10	Central African Republic	6,032,709	9.68 %	×0.7
11	Myanmar	4,326,433	6.63 %	×0.7
12	India	4,089,136	1.38 %	×0.7
13	United States	3,437,518	0.38 %	×0.7
14	Tanzania	3,379,759	3.82 %	×0.4
15	Guinea	3,253,360	13.2 %	×0.6
16	Venezuela	3,124,116	3.54 %	×0.8
17	Nigeria	2,933,327	3.22 %	×0.7
18	Thailand	2,671,281	5.23 %	×1.2
19	Laos	2,642,326	11.4 %	×0.7
20	Canada	2,631,351	0.30 %	×0.7

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