Indonesia Sees Nearly 600% Surge in Wildfire Hotspots per July

August 12, 2026 | 08:42 pm

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Wildfire hotspots have grown sharply between June and July. Environmental watchdog Pantau Gambut recorded at least 15,067 hotspots appearing in various regions in July 2026, a 594 percent surge.

Pantau Gambut believes this significant spike is a stark warning that a reactive approach is no longer sustainable. "The government cannot continue to wait for the blazes to escalate, then leave the local communities to suffer the consequences of slow prevention," said Pantau Gambut Executive Director Iola Abas in a written statement on Monday, August 10, 2026.

Pantau Gambut noted five provinces with the highest surge of wildfire hotspots in the past month: West Kalimantan, South Papua, Central Kalimantan, Aceh, and Riau.

Iola warned that this condition requires immediate action through location tracking and mapping of factors that make peatland areas susceptible to fire.

The Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) previously identified a sharp increase in hotspots across five regions. BMKG Head Teuku Faisal Fathani warned local authorities to watch for early indications of forest fires, considering that the peak of the dry season is expected to continue from August to September.

However, the number of hotspots detected by BMKG data is far lower than Pantau Gambut's data, with 4,900 hotspots as of Tuesday, July 28, 2026.

5 Provinces with the Largest Burned Areas

The latest data from FireWatch, the latest dashboard on the Nusantara Atlas satellite analytics map platform that charts the progress of the wildfire season in Indonesia, paints a more worrying picture. Reportedly, 285,914 hectares have burned in Indonesia so far this year, from January to July.

As of August 11, FireWatch had also detected 154,067 hotspots. Nusantara Atlas stated that the number of hotspots this year is on a trajectory similar to that of 2019, a Super El Nino year and the worst fire season in Indonesia in recent years.

The five provinces with the largest burned areas from January to July this year were East Nusa Tenggara (71,554 ha), South Papua (53,701 ha), East Java (39,916 ha), West Kalimantan (25,498 ha), and West Nusa Tenggara (17,049 ha).

According to Nusantara Atlas, this situation is becoming increasingly important as Indonesia enters the fire season in an El Nino year, when drier conditions trigger a quicker spread of blazes.

"Current figures do not yet determine the overall severity of the 2026 fire season, but these early trends need to be closely monitored," it said on its official Instagram account.

Read: Has Indonesia's Wildfire Smoke Affect Neighboring Nations?

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