Where is war right now? In autumn 2026 the largest active wars are the Russia–Ukraine war, the civil wars in Sudan and Myanmar, and a cluster of linked conflicts in the Middle East: Gaza and the West Bank, the Israel–Hezbollah front in Lebanon, post-Assad Syria, the Iran–Israel confrontation and Yemen's Houthis on the Red Sea. Around them run dozens of smaller armed conflicts, from the Sahel and eastern Congo to Somalia, Haiti and the Pakistan–Afghanistan border. This page lists the ten theaters followed on the battleMap live war map, with the essential context for each and a direct link to its live event map, and then notes the conflicts the map does not cover. Counts of "how many wars" depend entirely on the definition used, so this guide separates full-scale wars from lower-intensity conflicts instead of quoting a single number.
Which wars are the largest right now?
Ukraine — the largest war in Europe since 1945
Russia's full-scale invasion began on February 24, 2022, and the war is now in its fifth year. Fighting runs along a front of roughly a thousand kilometers through Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts, with cross-border activity in Kharkiv and Sumy and long-range missile and drone strikes far behind the lines on both sides. Repeated diplomatic initiatives have not produced a lasting ceasefire. Follow the front on the Russia–Ukraine war map, and learn to interpret it in how to read a frontline map.
Russia — the war inside Russia's borders
The same war has reached Russian territory: Ukrainian long-range drones strike refineries, fuel depots, airfields and defense plants, the border oblasts of Belgorod, Kursk and Bryansk come under fire, and in August 2024 Ukrainian troops crossed into Kursk oblast before being pushed largely out by spring 2025. Stray drones and missiles have also reached NATO airspace, most seriously over Poland in September 2025. These incidents are tracked on the Russia strikes map and, for the Polish side, in drones over Poland.
Sudan — the largest humanitarian catastrophe
The war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces began in April 2023. The army retook Khartoum in 2025, while the long siege of El Fasher in Darfur ended with the RSF taking the city in late 2025 amid reports of mass killings. Millions of people have been displaced, famine has been declared in parts of the country, and international attention remains thin. See the Sudan civil war map.
Myanmar — a nationwide civil war
The military coup of February 1, 2021 turned mass protests into armed resistance by the People's Defence Forces and ethnic armed organizations. Since Operation 1027 in late 2023 the resistance has taken towns, bases and border crossings in several states, and fighting continues across much of the country, including areas hit by the powerful earthquake of March 2025. Follow it on the Myanmar civil war map.
What is happening in the Middle East?
Israel–Palestine: Gaza and the West Bank
The current phase began with the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023 and the Israeli campaign in Gaza that followed. Ceasefires have come and gone: a truce agreed in January 2025 collapsed in March, and a US-brokered ceasefire and hostage deal in October 2025 sharply reduced the intensity of fighting without resolving the conflict, while raids and settler violence continued in the West Bank. The Israel–Palestine war map covers Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Lebanon and the Israel–Hezbollah front
Hezbollah opened a front on the Blue Line in October 2023; Israel escalated to a full air and ground campaign in autumn 2024, and a ceasefire took effect on November 27, 2024. Israel kept positions in southern Lebanon and has continued to strike Hezbollah targets, so the front is quiet only by comparison. Two maps cover it: the Israel–Lebanon border map for the Blue Line and the Lebanon war map for the whole country and the Syrian border.
Syria after Assad
The Assad regime fell on December 8, 2024. The transition since has been violent in places — sectarian killings on the coast and clashes in the south in 2025, Israeli strikes on Syrian territory, and the unresolved question of integrating the Kurdish-led SDF in the north-east. Turkey, Israel and the remnants of ISIS all shape the map. See the Syria war map.
Iran and Israel
After years of shadow war, Iran and Israel exchanged direct strikes in April and October 2024, and in June 2025 a twelve-day war brought Israeli strikes across Iran, Iranian missile barrages on Israel and US strikes on the Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites before a ceasefire on June 24, 2025. The confrontation has not been settled, and the Strait of Hormuz remains the pressure point for global energy markets. Follow it on the Iran–Israel war map and in our Iran–Israel conflict map guide.
Yemen and the Red Sea
The Houthi movement began attacking shipping near the Bab el-Mandeb strait in November 2023 in solidarity with Gaza, prompting US and UK strikes from January 2024 and later Israeli strikes on Houthi-held areas. Attacks on ships have come in waves rather than ending, and the civil war inside Yemen between the Houthis and the internationally recognized government remains frozen along its old front lines. See the Yemen war map.
Which conflicts are not on the map?
battleMap follows ten theaters, chosen for the volume and quality of open-source reporting rather than for importance. Several active conflicts fall outside it:
- The Sahel — Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger fight jihadist insurgencies (JNIM and the Islamic State's Sahel branch) after expelling French and UN forces and turning to Russian support; the violence has spread toward coastal West Africa.
- Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo — the Rwanda-backed M23 took Goma and Bukavu in early 2025; peace agreements signed later that year did not end the fighting.
- Somalia — the government and its partners against al-Shabaab, a war of advances and reversals.
- Ethiopia — insurgencies in the Amhara and Oromia regions after the Tigray war, with tensions involving Eritrea.
- Haiti — armed gangs control most of the capital; an international support mission has struggled to change that.
- South Asia — a brief but intense India–Pakistan clash in May 2025, recurring Pakistan–Afghanistan border fighting, and insurgencies in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
- Latin America — criminal armed conflict in Mexico, Colombia's wars with the ELN and FARC dissidents, and gang violence in Ecuador, which match many wars in lethality without being wars between states.
Tensions that are not wars but could become them — the Taiwan Strait, the Korean peninsula, the Armenia–Azerbaijan border after the 2023 end of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Venezuela's claim to Guyana's Essequibo region — are best followed through ship and aircraft movements on the live tracker rather than through an event map that would stay empty.
What counts as an "active war"?
Researchers usually distinguish armed conflicts, with at least some battle deaths in a year, from wars, with a much higher threshold, and frozen conflicts, where a front line exists but almost nobody is being killed. By that logic Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar and Gaza are wars; Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and the Russia theater are armed conflicts of varying intensity; the Iran–Israel confrontation alternates between quiet and open war within days. Reference datasets such as ACLED, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program and the Heidelberg Conflict Barometer each apply their own thresholds, which is why published counts of "wars in the world" range so widely. Live maps answer a different question — what was reported where in the last few hours — and the two should not be confused. Our own definitions and limits are set out in the methodology and data sources.
How do you follow every theater in one place?
Open the index of all conflicts or go straight to the live war map, pick a region, and read the event list: each entry has a timestamp, coordinates, a category and a link to the source that reported it. New events arrive roughly every five minutes and titles are translated automatically; the free dashboard keeps thirty days of history. Terms you will meet along the way — OSINT, Shahed drones, the Houthis, the RSF — are defined in the glossary. For a wider comparison of the year's hotspots, see the live world conflict map overview.
Key takeaways
- The largest wars in autumn 2026 are Ukraine, Sudan and Myanmar, plus the linked Middle East conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Yemen.
- Dozens of smaller conflicts — the Sahel, Congo, Somalia, Haiti, South Asia, Latin America — are not on the map but are no less deadly.
- "How many wars" depends on the definition; live maps show reports, not verdicts.
- Each theater has its own live map; start from the conflicts index.