Acres Burned by Wildfires by State 2025

What this chart shows. The 25 states where wildfires burned the most land in 2025, in acres. Alaska led with 1,006,158 acres, 19.6 per cent of the national total of 5,131,474, followed by California with 505,006 and Arizona with 331,638.

How the data is collected. Each fire's reported size is summed by state in the NICC annual report, which also splits the area by cause. In Alaska, 99.8 per cent of the burned area came from fires started by lightning.

Background. Nationally, 5,131,474 acres burned in 2025, 42.5 per cent less than the 8,924,884 acres of 2024, and the report puts the total more than two million acres below the five- and ten-year averages. Oklahoma, 5th, burned almost entirely in human-caused fires: lightning fires burned only 60 of its 304,120 acres.

Limits. The figures come from situation reports filed during the season, and the report notes for its fire list that such figures may not reflect final official numbers. A single very large fire can move a state several places up this ranking.