Europe Wildfire Map — Live Forest Fire Tracker
Active fire & thermal hotspots across Europe from NASA VIIRS & MODIS satellites · the data EFFIS/Copernicus uses · filter by country · 24h / 48h / 7-day
Dimmed bars are hidden by the fire-power filter. Burnt areas with no live hotspot have no power class.
Guide — find the fires that matter to you
24h shows what is burning now, 48h covers a missed satellite pass, 7 days shows the week’s fires and burnt areas.
VIIRS (375 m pixels) catches smaller fires. MODIS (1 km pixels) is coarser but has a record going back to 2000.
The map opens on Extreme only, the biggest fires. Lower it to All levels to see every hotspot cluster and burnt area.
The Country list flies there and counts its fires. The Burning area list jumps to the largest ones and opens wind, rain, smoke (PM2.5) and size.
Fires per country and the fire-power mix follow your filters. Click a country bar to fly the map there.
What each layer answers
- shows
- heat a satellite detected on its last pass
- use it for
- where fires are burning today
- source
- NASA VIIRS / MODIS via EFFIS
- shows
- outlines of land already burnt
- use it for
- how big a fire has become
- source
- EFFIS rapid damage mapping
- shows
- today’s fire-danger forecast
- use it for
- where a spark would spread fast
- source
- EFFIS Fire Weather Index
- shows
- LOW to EXTREME per fire
- use it for
- separating big fires from small burns
- based on
- radiative power (MW) or hotspot count
Live wildfire map of Europe, explained
This map shows where forest fires and other strong heat sources were detected across Europe in the last 24 hours, 48 hours or 7 days. The orange points are active-fire hotspots picked up by NASA’s VIIRS and MODIS satellite instruments, the red shapes are burnt-area perimeters mapped by the EU’s European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), and the optional shading is today’s fire-danger forecast. Everything loads in your browser from public services; there is no account and no API key.
Where are the wildfires in Europe right now?
Set the window to 24h and the fire-power filter to All levels. The status box in the top-right corner of the map then shows how many fires were found and roughly how many hotspots make them up. The Fires by country chart under the map ranks the countries with the most fires in your current view of the data. Pick a country to zoom in, and use the Burning area list to jump to its largest fires.
Hotspots, burnt areas and fire risk: what is the difference?
A hotspot is a satellite pixel that was much hotter than its surroundings during an overpass: it says something is burning here now. A burnt area is the mapped outline of land that has already burnt, so it shows how much damage a fire has done. The fire risk layer is a forecast of the Fire Weather Index (FWI) from the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index System, which EFFIS uses for Europe. It combines temperature, humidity, wind and rain. A high FWI means a fire would spread easily; it does not mean a fire is burning.
How a “fire” is counted
One large wildfire can light up dozens of satellite pixels. To turn pixels into fires, the map groups all hotspots within 10 km of each other into one cluster and links it to the nearest EFFIS burnt-area record, if there is one. The live count comes from NASA’s GIBS fire images (the NOAA-20 VIIRS or combined MODIS layer), which are read pixel by pixel in your browser. That is why the hotspot total is shown with ≈: it is a close estimate, not an official tally. If GIBS cannot be reached, the page falls back to the EFFIS image layer and then to NASA FIRMS data files.
How fire power is graded
When a fire’s fire radiative power (FRP, the heat it gives off in megawatts) is known, the class follows the first column. When only the number of hotspots is known, the second column is used. These classes are this map’s own scale for sorting fires, not an official EFFIS rating.
| Class | Fire radiative power | or hotspots in the cluster |
|---|---|---|
| LOW | under 20 MW | 1 |
| MODERATE | 20–50 MW | 2–4 |
| HIGH | 50–200 MW | 5–9 |
| VERY HIGH | 200–500 MW | 10–19 |
| EXTREME | 500 MW and more | 20 or more |
Burnt areas without a live hotspot have no power class. They only show when the filter is set to All levels.
How current is the map?
It is near real time, not a live video. The polar-orbiting satellites that carry VIIRS and MODIS each pass over a given spot in Europe roughly twice a day, and NASA publishes its near-real-time detections within about three hours of an overpass. A fire that started an hour ago may not appear until the next pass. The status box shows the exact date range being displayed.
Why a fire can be missing, or a dot is not a fire
- Missed fires: thick cloud or smoke blocks the infrared sensor, small or low-intensity fires stay below the detection limit, and a fire can start and end between two passes. Widen the window to 48h or 7 days.
- False alarms: hotspots also catch farmers burning stubble, gas flares, steelworks and other industrial heat, and volcanoes such as Etna. A single LOW point next to a factory is rarely a wildfire.
- Location: a hotspot marks the centre of a 375 m or 1 km pixel, so the fire can be a few hundred metres away from the dot.
Europe’s wildfire season and the 2025 record
Fires in Europe peak in July and August, but the season is starting earlier and lasting longer. 2025 was the EU’s most destructive wildfire year on record: according to the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, 1,079,538 hectares burnt in the EU, nearly double the 2006–2024 average. Fires hit 25 of the 27 member states, and Germany, Spain, Cyprus and Slovakia each set a national record. August alone accounted for 460,585 hectares, 43% of the year’s total, after a three-week heatwave. Roughly 39% of the burnt area lay in Natura 2000 protected sites.
The EU’s civil-protection knowledge network states that about 95% of wildfires in Europe are caused directly or indirectly by people, through negligence such as discarded cigarettes or out-of-control burning, accidents with machinery and power lines, and arson. Lightning causes most of the rest.
Data sources and method
- Map layers: EFFIS / Copernicus Emergency Management Service web map service: VIIRS and MODIS hotspots, MODIS burnt areas (today or this week) and the FWI forecast for today.
- Live counts: NASA GIBS thermal-anomaly images, with EFFIS and NASA FIRMS as fallbacks.
- Fire details: wind, temperature, humidity and seven-day rain from Open-Meteo; PM2.5 smoke from the Open-Meteo air-quality model (based on Copernicus CAMS); place names from BigDataCloud.
- Countries: the country chart assigns each fire to a country using simple rectangular boxes (the smallest box that contains it), so fires near a border can be counted for a neighbour.
- Basemap: Esri dark or light grey canvas, following the site theme.
Privacy
There is no account, no cookie and no tracking beyond privacy-first page counts. The map does not ask for your location. When you open a fire, only that fire’s coordinates are sent to Open-Meteo and BigDataCloud to fetch the weather, smoke and place name.
Not an emergency service
Satellite data lags reality by hours and misses small fires. Never use this map to decide whether to evacuate. If you see a wildfire, call 112 anywhere in the EU and follow your national civil-protection service.
More live maps
Follow the smoke with the Europe air quality map, watch firefighting aircraft on the live flight radar, see why some regions dry out faster on the Europe groundwater map, or browse all free tools.
# More live maps and dashboards
Built the same way as this one — real data, drawn in your browser, no account and nothing uploaded.