Fighting in Sudan’s Kordofan region has intensified since late 2025, turning it into one of the main battlegrounds in the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), now in its fourth year. The vast region, which comprises North, West and South Kordofan states, lies where the two sides’ areas of control meet, between the army-held central region and the RSF-controlled Darfur in the West. In recent months, the SAF has pushed the RSF out of much of North Kordofan.
The battle is increasingly being fought from the air. Drone strikes on towns in North Kordofan are growing more frequent and deadly, and civilian infrastructure has been hit across the region. Since the war began in April 2023, one in five recorded attacks in Sudan has taken place in Kordofan.
Al Jazeera maps where the fighting is concentrated in Kordofan and across Sudan, and the displacement that has followed. Sudan is broadly divided between the two sides. The SAF controls the capital, Khartoum, and most of the north, east and centre, while the RSF controls the west, including almost all of Darfur and parts of Kordofan.
Smaller armed groups, including the RSF-allied Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), hold pockets of territory in the south. The army has the upper hand in the north, the RSF in the west, and South Kordofan remains contested. According to an Al Jazeera analysis of data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), an independent conflict monitor, there were 14,648 recorded attacks between the start of the war on April 15, 2023, and September 19, 2026.
The SAF is associated with the largest share of recorded attacks between April 15, 2023 and September 19, 2026, accounting for just over half (52 percent), compared with just over a third (34.7 percent) for the RSF and 13.3 percent for other actors. The balance of attacks has shifted over time. The SAF was associated with more recorded attacks than the RSF in the first year and a half of the war, before the RSF overtook it in number of attacks from late 2024 to mid-2025.
Since August 2025, the two sides’ monthly attack counts have been closer, with the SAF generally recording slightly more, even as the overall number of attacks has fallen sharply. After the fall of el-Fasher, the last major Darfur city held by the army and its allies, in October 2025, attention shifted to Kordofan. The region sits between RSF-held Darfur and the army-held centre, north and east, forming a corridor between the two sides’ heartlands.
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