The Sudan civil war that erupted in Khartoum on April 15, 2023 has, by May 2026, become what UN OCHA and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies repeatedly describe as the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. The numbers alone are staggering: over ten million internally displaced persons (the highest displacement total of any contemporary conflict), more than two million refugees in neighboring countries, a formal famine declaration in parts of Darfur and Kordofan, and approximately twenty-five million people — over half the population — in need of humanitarian assistance. Yet the Sudan civil war receives only a fraction of the international attention given to the conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, or even Yemen. The Sudan war live map exists in part to make this crisis visible to the readers who are looking for it.
From the 2019 revolution to the April 2023 outbreak
The Sudan civil war did not emerge from a vacuum. It emerged from the failure of the 2019 democratic transition that followed the overthrow of dictator Omar al-Bashir after thirty years of rule. The transition produced a fragile civilian-military Sovereignty Council intended to lead Sudan to elections — and intended, on paper, to merge the country's two major armed structures into a single national army. Those two structures were the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), under General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), under General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known universally as "Hemedti."
The RSF traces its origin to the Janjaweed militias deployed by the Bashir regime to suppress the 2003-2005 Darfur uprising. UN OCHA documentation, supported by subsequent International Criminal Court investigations, established that approximately 300,000 people were killed in the original Darfur genocide. After 2013, Bashir formalized the Janjaweed as the RSF, gave it legal status, access to Darfur and Libyan gold revenues, and the freedom to grow into a paramilitary force of tens of thousands of fighters.
When SAF and RSF jointly overthrew civilian Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok in October 2021, the two structures became co-dictators of Sudan. The unresolved question — on what terms and on what timeline RSF would integrate into SAF — exploded into open combat on April 15, 2023, with simultaneous fighting at Khartoum International Airport, the SAF general headquarters, the presidential palace, and at multiple RSF bases across the capital.
The battle for Khartoum, Omdurman, and Bahri
The Sudan civil war's opening weeks transformed Sudan's tri-cities — Khartoum, Omdurman, and Bahri — into an extended urban battlefield. The RSF, due to its existing presence inside the capital and its mobile pickup-truck-based tactics, rapidly seized control of large residential districts, ministries, hospitals, and the presidential palace. SAF, with control of the air force and heavy artillery, conducted aerial bombing campaigns from outlying bases and from Wadi Seidna airbase north of Omdurman.
The destruction was systematic and largely indiscriminate. UN OCHA reporting documented hits on the Central Pediatric Hospital, dozens of other medical facilities, the Khartoum University campus, the National Archives, and the headquarters of the National Telecommunications Corporation. Approximately three quarters of Khartoum's pre-war population fled, with much of the middle class relocating to Port Sudan in the east, to Wadi Halfa toward the Egyptian border, or directly into exile in Egypt, Chad, and South Sudan.
From mid-2024 through 2025, SAF gradually reclaimed terrain in Omdurman and Bahri, supported by armed civilian volunteer groups and by drone strikes that some Western and regional analysts have attributed to Iranian-supplied Shahed-136 systems. By early 2026, SAF controlled most of the capital region, though entire neighborhoods remained too damaged for any meaningful return.
The 2026 frontline — by region
The Sudan civil war in May 2026 plays out across several distinct theaters tracked on the Sudan war live map:
- Khartoum, Omdurman, Bahri — predominantly SAF-controlled by 2026, with intermittent RSF infiltration and continued damage assessment of the destroyed urban core.
- Darfur — the RSF's historic home region. After seizing the regional capitals of Nyala, Zalingei, and El Geneina in 2023, the RSF controls the majority of Darfur. El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, remains the last significant SAF-held city in the region, under continuous siege since 2024. The siege of El Fasher is one of the most tragic dimensions of the Sudan civil war.
- Kordofan — the strategic central region connecting the capital to Darfur. Active fighting in Kadugli, Dilling, and El Obeid. SAF conducts counter-offensive operations supported by local armed groups from the Nuba Mountains.
- Al-Jazirah — the fertile agricultural region south of Khartoum. The RSF's January 2024 seizure of Wad Madani displaced approximately half a million civilians who had previously fled the capital, triggering one of the war's secondary humanitarian crises. SAF reclaimed significant portions of Al-Jazirah in 2025.
- Port Sudan and the east — SAF-controlled, functioning as the de facto temporary capital and the country's only major seaport. RSF has conducted drone strikes against Port Sudan targets since 2024 using long-range UAVs reportedly of Iranian origin, including Shahed-136 loitering munitions.
- Borders with Chad, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Libya, and Egypt — gray zones with local militias, smuggling networks, and continuing tensions over the Al-Fashaga triangle disputed with Ethiopia.
Territory control on the Sudan war live map is updated based on open-source cartographic data and OSINT reporting. Coverage in Darfur remains less precise than elsewhere because of severely restricted access for both journalists and humanitarian organizations.
The humanitarian crisis — famine, displacement, disease
What distinguishes the Sudan civil war from other contemporary conflicts is the sheer scale of the humanitarian crisis. UN OCHA's December 2025 Sudan situation report documented:
- Over 10 million internally displaced persons — making Sudan the world's largest internal displacement crisis.
- Over 2 million refugees in Chad, South Sudan, Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya, and the Central African Republic.
- IPC Phase 5 famine formally declared in parts of Darfur and Kordofan — the first such declaration anywhere globally since the 2017 South Sudan famine.
- Approximately 25 million people requiring humanitarian assistance — over half the country's pre-war population.
- Cholera, malaria, and measles outbreaks across multiple states amid destroyed sanitary infrastructure.
- Documented widespread sexual violence used as a weapon of war, particularly in Darfur — a continuation of patterns documented in the original 2003-2005 Janjaweed campaigns.
The situation in refugee camps around El Fasher (Zamzam, Abu Shouk) and in Chad (Adre, Farchana) has been described by UN OCHA as catastrophic. Humanitarian access has been deliberately impeded by both SAF and RSF, with humanitarian convoys attacked and aid workers killed. The World Food Programme has reduced rations multiple times due to funding gaps and operational impossibility.
Foreign backers — UAE, Russia, Egypt, Iran, and the gold question
The Sudan civil war is also a proxy war, layered with regional power competition for influence in the Red Sea, the Sahel, and the Horn of Africa. Documented and credibly reported foreign involvement:
- RSF supporters — the United Arab Emirates has been the most consistently identified backer, providing weapons (drones, anti-tank systems) routed through Chad, Libya, and Uganda according to multiple investigations including a January 2024 UN Panel of Experts report. RSF also maintains operational coordination with Wagner / Africa Corps personnel, particularly around Darfur gold mining sites. Libyan general Khalifa Haftar has facilitated weapons transit.
- SAF supporters — Egypt has provided weapons, drones, and combat aircraft training given Cairo's strategic interest in Khartoum's stance on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Iran has provided Shahed-136 drones, making the Sudan civil war one of multiple theaters demonstrating Iranian drone capabilities globally (see our Iran-Israel war analysis). Turkey and several Gulf states have provided varying degrees of support.
Gold from RSF-controlled Darfur and Red Sea mountain mines has been the central financing mechanism for the Sudan civil war. Investigations by ACLED, the Sentry, and Global Witness documented gold smuggling networks linking Sudan to Dubai and onward to global markets, fueling both RSF military operations and personal enrichment of RSF leadership. The Foreign Policy Research Institute described Sudan as "the world's most under-reported gold-financed war" in a 2024 brief.
Regional spillover — Chad, South Sudan, Egypt, Ethiopia
The Sudan civil war is destabilizing the entire Horn of Africa and Sahel region:
- Chad has received over 700,000 Sudanese refugees, primarily in the Adre and Farchana camps. Concerns about RSF using Chadian territory as a logistics base, alongside Chad's own internal political fragility, raise risks of broader contagion.
- South Sudan faces severance of its primary oil export route — the pipeline running through Sudan to Port Sudan — multiple times due to fighting along the pipeline corridor. Combined with returnees from Khartoum, South Sudan faces a parallel economic and humanitarian crisis.
- Egypt has received approximately one million Sudanese, primarily middle-class urban refugees concentrated in Cairo. Egypt's strategic backing of SAF is connected to broader Nile water security concerns and the GERD dispute.
- Ethiopia — tensions over the Al-Fashaga triangle and over relationships with both SAF and various Tigrayan and Amhara armed movements complicate regional alignment.
- Libya — Haftar's facilitation of weapons transit through eastern Libya to RSF in Darfur is one of multiple cross-border flows.
How to monitor the Sudan civil war on battleMap
The Sudan war live map aggregates verified OSINT reporting from Sudanese media (multiple sides), international agencies, UN OCHA situation reports, WFP food security updates, Human Rights Watch documentation, the Sentry investigations, and verified social-media-sourced geolocations. Features include:
- Event map — every reported airstrike, ground engagement, attack on humanitarian convoys, massacre, and displacement event is geolocated with UTC timestamps.
- Territory control layer — daily-updated polygons showing SAF, RSF, and allied armed group control zones.
- Humanitarian overlay — UN OCHA-documented incidents, IDP camp locations, and famine designations.
- Filters — by date, by event category (attack / displacement / humanitarian), and by region (Khartoum, Darfur, Kordofan, Al-Jazirah, Port Sudan).
- Four-language support — PL, EN, UK, RU title translations.
- REST API — full event database programmatically accessible; see /battlemap/api.
FAQ — Sudan war live map
Who is winning the Sudan civil war in 2026?
Neither side is winning in any conventional sense. SAF controls most urban centers and the institutions of the state; RSF controls vast rural areas including most of Darfur. The conflict has stalled into a multi-year stalemate with catastrophic humanitarian consequences.
Why is the Sudan civil war so under-covered in international media?
A combination of factors: media bandwidth competition with Ukraine and the Middle East; severely restricted journalist access; the absence of major Western strategic interests; and a degree of "conflict fatigue" after two decades of Darfur coverage. The CSIS Africa Program described this in 2024 as "the most catastrophic blind spot in Western foreign-policy attention."
How current is the territory control layer?
Updated regularly, but with lower precision than for Ukraine or Israel due to limited OSINT access to Darfur and other inaccessible regions. Where uncertainty is significant, the map indicates contested or unverified status.
Where does humanitarian data come from?
UN OCHA situation reports, WFP IPC food security classifications, IOM displacement tracking, UNHCR refugee data, and Human Rights Watch country reporting.
What comes next
The Sudan civil war in 2026 has no near-term political horizon. Multiple negotiation processes — Jeddah talks under Saudi-US sponsorship, subsequent Geneva talks, the African Union peace initiative — have collapsed without producing meaningful ceasefires. Without genuine withdrawal of external support to both SAF and RSF, and without internal calculation changes by Generals Burhan and Hemedti, the war can continue for years. Meanwhile, the cost — measured in famine deaths, mass displacement, and documented sexual violence — remains among the highest civilian tolls of any 21st-century conflict.
To follow the Sudan civil war in real time, open the Sudan war live map, enable PWA push notifications, and bookmark the page. For methodology and related coverage: Iran-Israel war analysis, the Syria war live map, and the Israel-Palestine war live map. For terminology, see the glossary and FAQ.