Burned area rate across Europe, 2025
Hectares burned per 1,000 km² of land area, so countries of very different sizes can be compared. Select a country to focus the rest of the dashboard on it.
Portugal2025
Burned area
278,917 ha
+94.1%vs 2024
Number of fires
200 fires
+9.9%vs 2024
Burned area / fire
1,395 ha
Average size of a mapped fire
vs historical average
+189.5%
Average 96,360 ha over the other complete years
Rank in Europe
3rd of 34
By burned area in the selected year
Share of European total
14.1%
Of all burned area in the dataset this year
Records
Extremes across Portugal's complete years.
- Worst year by burned area2017
- 563,530 ha
- Most fires mapped2017
- 408 fires
- Lowest burned area2008
- 5,350 ha
- Average per complete year
- 105,488 ha
Complete years only (2006–2025).
Ranking — 2025
Countries ordered by burned area rate.
Burned area rate by country in 2025. Highest is Portugal at 3,045 ha. 34 countries have a value.
Select a row to focus the rest of the dashboard on that country.
Portugal year by year
Burned area and fire counts for every year in the dataset.
Portugal long-run trend
Yearly values smoothed with a five-year moving average and a fitted straight line.
Portugal trend projection
A straight line fitted to recent complete years and extended forward.
Compare countries
Put several countries on one axis. Index them to make very differently sized countries comparable.
Data table
Every value behind the visualisations, sortable and scoped to the current selection.
21 rows
| Portugal | 2026YTD | 64,266 ha | 702 ha | 189 | 2.06 fires | 340 ha | -77.0% | -39.1% |
| Portugal | 2025 | 278,917 ha | 3,045 ha | 200 | 2.18 fires | 1,395 ha | +94.1% | +189.5% |
| Portugal | 2024 | 143,684 ha | 1,569 ha | 182 | 1.99 fires | 789 ha | +289.9% | +38.9% |
| Portugal | 2023 | 36,855 ha | 402 ha | 168 | 1.83 fires | 219 ha | -64.7% | -66.2% |
| Portugal | 2022 | 104,379 ha | 1,139 ha | 258 | 2.82 fires | 405 ha | +303.7% | -1.1% |
| Portugal | 2021 | 25,855 ha | 282 ha | 187 | 2.04 fires | 138 ha | -58.7% | -76.4% |
| Portugal | 2020 | 62,557 ha | 683 ha | 175 | 1.91 fires | 357 ha | +87.0% | -41.9% |
| Portugal | 2019 | 33,451 ha | 365 ha | 172 | 1.88 fires | 194 ha | -9.9% | -69.4% |
| Portugal | 2018 | 37,144 ha | 405 ha | 78 | 0.85 fires | 476 ha | -93.4% | -65.9% |
| Portugal | 2017 | 563,530 ha | 6,152 ha | 408 | 4.45 fires | 1,381 ha | +239.8% | +592.5% |
| Portugal | 2016 | 165,853 ha | 1,811 ha | 312 | 3.41 fires | 532 ha | +250.7% | +62.1% |
| Portugal | 2015 | 47,286 ha | 516 ha | 169 | 1.84 fires | 280 ha | +309.4% | -56.4% |
| Portugal | 2014 | 11,550 ha | 126 ha | 34 | 0.37 fires | 340 ha | -92.5% | -89.5% |
| Portugal | 2013 | 153,408 ha | 1,675 ha | 326 | 3.56 fires | 471 ha | +51.8% | +49.0% |
| Portugal | 2012 | 101,053 ha | 1,103 ha | 227 | 2.48 fires | 445 ha | +56.8% | -4.4% |
| Portugal | 2011 | 64,442 ha | 703 ha | 303 | 3.31 fires | 213 ha | -49.5% | -40.1% |
| Portugal | 2010 | 127,560 ha | 1,392 ha | 292 | 3.19 fires | 437 ha | +70.5% | +22.3% |
| Portugal | 2009 | 74,816 ha | 817 ha | 322 | 3.52 fires | 232 ha | +1,298.4% | -30.1% |
| Portugal | 2008 | 5,350 ha | 58 ha | 33 | 0.36 fires | 162 ha | -65.8% | -95.2% |
| Portugal | 2007 | 15,650 ha | 171 ha | 68 | 0.74 fires | 230 ha | -72.3% | -85.8% |
| Portugal | 2006 | 56,424 ha | 616 ha | 155 | 1.69 fires | 364 ha | N/A | -47.8% |
About the data
Where the numbers come from
EFFIS is the European Forest Fire Information System, part of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service. It maps burned areas across Europe from satellite imagery and publishes country-level statistics from them.
This application uses EFFIS statistics that were downloaded once and are stored locally as CSV files. Nothing is fetched from EFFIS while you use the page, so the figures reflect the snapshot taken on 25 August 2026 and will not match the live EFFIS portal once EFFIS updates.
The dataset covers 34 countries from 2006 to 2026. Two quantities are reported per country and year: the total burned area in hectares, and the number of individual fires mapped.
forest-fire.emergency.copernicus.eu(opens in a new tab)
Land area, for the rates
The two rate metrics — burned area and fire count per 1,000 km² — divide by each country's land area. Without that, a choropleth mostly shows which countries are large: Ukraine, Spain and Türkiye lead on absolute burned area largely because of their size, while Portugal, Montenegro and Albania carry far more fire per unit of land.
Land areas come from the World Bank's Land area (sq. km) indicator(opens in a new tab), originally compiled by FAOSTAT, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and are used under CC BY-4.0. The indicator measures a country's total area, excluding area under inland water bodies, national claims to continental shelf, and exclusive economic zones. Inland water is excluded, which matters for countries such as Finland and Sweden.
One fixed area per country is used, taken from 2023. The World Bank notes that year-to-year movement in this indicator is usually a data revision rather than a real change in area.
How to read them
- EFFIS states that its statistics cover fires it has mapped from satellite imagery, roughly 30 hectares and larger. Smaller fires, which make up most fire events in many countries, are not counted here. National fire statistics will therefore report different — usually much larger — fire counts.
- Some mapped burned areas may include fires set deliberately for vegetation management, not only unwanted wildfires.
- 2026 is incomplete. It covers only part of the year and is marked “YTD” throughout. It is excluded from historical averages, trend lines and projections unless you explicitly opt in, and it should not be compared with a full year without that in mind.
- Every derived figure — area per fire, the two rates, year-on-year change, difference from the historical average, moving averages and trends — is computed from these two quantities and, for the rates, from land area. Nothing else is added. Where a calculation is undefined, for example dividing by a year with zero fires, the interface shows N/A rather than a guess.
This is an independent visualization based on EFFIS data. It is not an official EFFIS or Copernicus service.