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Montana Current Fire Restrictions (2026)

Conditional: Montana issues fire restrictions per land-management unit (county, national forest, BLM district, FWP site) — there is no single statewide Stage, and the Stage can differ between landowner classes inside the same county. THE LAST STAGE 1 RESTRICTIONS HAVE BEEN LIFTED: on Montana DNRC's official Active Fire Restrictions layer (units edited as recently as October 29, 2026), NO unit is at Stage 1 or Stage 2 — 528 units carry no restrictions or closures and 3 units have no restriction recorded (down from 3 units at Stage 1 on October 28, 2026, 15 on October 2, 2026 and 57 on September 18, 2026). The 3 RICHLAND COUNTY units that were the last at Stage 1, in DNRC's Miles City area, came off it: state non-forest land and private non-forest land on October 28, 2026, and the Montana FWP sites on October 29, 2026. Earlier, on October 19, 2026, 8 units came off Stage 1 in Carter County and on Bureau of Reclamation land in Beaverhead, Hill and Phillips counties, and Carter County's FWP sites followed on October 27, 2026. Federal units set their own orders: the Lolo National Forest rescinded its Stage 2 fire restrictions effective September 2, 2026 (forest news release of September 1, 2026). Year-round wildland baseline still applies: no fireworks, no exploding or binary targets, no tracer or steel-core ammunition, and internal-combustion engines need a working spark arrestor; DNRC burn permits and county burning rules also still apply. Restrictions are set unit by unit and can return quickly in a dry spell — check your exact county and land unit on the DNRC fire restrictions map before any open flame.

ConditionalVerified Nov 12, 2026

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Current Fire Restrictions in states bordering Montana

How each neighboring state LawLert has verified classifies the same rule, with its own official source and the date it was last checked. The wording is on that state’s page.

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