April 15, 2023 – March 2025 · Khartoum Theater

The war began in Khartoum on April 15, 2023, and the RSF held most of the capital within days — occupying homes, hospitals, and ministries, and turning a city of six million into a battlefield. For nearly two years the SAF clung to northern Khartoum, Omdurman, and the army headquarters while the RSF looted the rest. The tide turned with a coordinated SAF offensive across Bahri, Khartoum, and Omdurman beginning in late 2024. In January 2025 the army expelled the RSF from Omdurman and retook the oil refinery north of the capital; on March 21, 2025 it recaptured the Presidential Palace, and by March 27 it held Khartoum. The city it recovered was substantially destroyed, its infrastructure stripped and its population dispersed.

April 2023 – 2024 · Khartoum (Omdurman) Theater

Omdurman — the historic twin city to Khartoum, site of Kitchener's decisive 1898 battle — became one of the primary RSF strongholds. RSF fighters moved through civilian neighborhoods, establishing firing positions in homes and mosques. SAF airstrikes hit RSF positions but caused widespread civilian casualties. The RSF's control of Omdurman's commercial and residential heart gave them a chokehold on supply routes into Khartoum. Over 500,000 people fled Omdurman's metropolitan area in the first three months.

April 2023 – October 27, 2025 · North Darfur Theater

El Fasher was the last major Darfur city outside RSF control and the refuge for hundreds of thousands displaced from the rest of the region. The RSF besieged it from May 2024 — cutting food and water, shelling the displacement camps around it, and triggering famine inside them — for eighteen months. On October 27, 2025 the RSF announced its capture. What followed was the worst massacre of the war: the UN Human Rights Office documented more than 6,000 killings in the first three days alone, with satellite imagery corroborating mass killing sites, and Darfuri officials putting the toll far higher. Patients and staff were killed inside the Saudi Maternity Hospital. In February 2026 the UN found that the RSF's conduct in taking the city amounted to war crimes.

April – December 2023 · Darfur Theater

Simultaneous with the Khartoum fighting, RSF forces and Arab tribal militias swept across Darfur, overrunning SAF garrisons and attacking non-Arab African communities — the Masalit, Fur, and Zaghawa peoples targeted in the 2003–08 Darfur genocide. In El Geneina, capital of West Darfur and home to 500,000 people, the RSF and allied militias conducted systematic massacres, mass rape, and ethnic cleansing. Governor Khamis Abbakar was captured on video and then executed. Over a million people were displaced from Darfur's five states.

May – August 2023 · Red Sea Coast Theater

Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast became the SAF's wartime capital and primary logistics lifeline after the fall of Khartoum. The SAF worked to secure the port city and its supply lines against RSF infiltration and raids that sought to cut the government's last major entry point for arms and supplies. Egyptian military aid arrived through Port Sudan; the city became headquarters for the SAF high command, foreign diplomatic missions, and what remained of the Sudanese civilian government. Sporadic RSF attacks on road corridors leading inland were repelled.

June 2023 · West Darfur Theater

El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur and a city of approximately 500,000 people, was the site of one of the war's worst atrocities. RSF forces and Arab tribal militias swept through the city's non-Arab Masalit neighborhoods with systematic violence — shooting men in the streets, committing mass rape, burning homes, and forcing mass displacement toward Chad. Governor Khamis Abbakar was captured during the fighting and executed on video while calling for international help. UN investigators documented tens of thousands of killings — estimates range from 10,000 to 15,000 dead in the greater West Darfur violence — with patterns constituting genocide.

August – September 2023 · North Darfur Theater

Following the capture of Nyala and El Geneina, RSF forces pushed northward through North Darfur State, seizing towns and overrunning SAF outposts. The advance threatened El Fasher and brought RSF supply lines closer to Libya's border, through which arms and fuel were flowing via Haftar-aligned factions. Armed movements loyal to Minni Minnawi coordinated with the SAF to establish defensive lines around El Fasher. The RSF advance was slowed by stiffening resistance from a coalition of SAF regulars, SLM fighters, and local self-defense forces.

August 2023 · Sennar State Theater

The RSF's advance into Sennar State in August 2023 was part of its broader strategy to encircle SAF-held areas along the Nile corridor and threaten supply lines between Port Sudan and the north. Sennar, located on the Blue Nile and historically important as a medieval sultanate capital, fell to RSF columns that moved rapidly from Darfur through Kordofan. The SAF's defensive posture was inadequate for the speed and direction of the RSF advance. The city's fall opened the Blue Nile valley to potential RSF exploitation.

October 2023 · South Darfur Theater

Nyala, Sudan's third-largest city and the capital of South Darfur State, fell to RSF forces in October 2023 after weeks of fighting. The RSF overran SAF positions in the city using its standard tactics of encirclement by mobile columns and denial of resupply. The fall of Nyala effectively completed RSF control over most of Darfur outside El Fasher. The city's civilian population — including hundreds of thousands of displaced people sheltering in camps from the 2003–08 genocide — was subjected to looting, violence, and ethnic targeting. International aid agencies were forced to evacuate.

September 2024 – March 2025 · North Khartoum / Nile Corridor Theater

With Egyptian military support, Iranian-supplied drones, and resupplied artillery, the SAF launched a significant counteroffensive in late 2024 to recapture northern Khartoum and reopen the Nile corridor. The offensive made gains in Khartoum North and Bahri district, pushing RSF forces back several kilometers in some sectors. Bridges over the Nile became key objectives. The SAF made effective use of Iranian Shahed-136 drones — the same technology Russia was using against Ukraine — for precision strikes against RSF positions.

2024 – Present · North Kordofan Theater

El Obeid, capital of North Kordofan and the junction controlling the roads between Khartoum and Darfur, has endured siege-like conditions for more than eighteen months. Residents have faced relentless drone strikes, critical water shortages, and — as documented by UN monitors — summary executions, abductions, torture, and widespread conflict-related sexual violence. After losing Khartoum in March 2025, the RSF made Kordofan its principal theater, and El Obeid the prize that would reopen its route to the capital.

2025 – Present · South Kordofan Theater

Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan, has been under prolonged RSF siege and in famine conditions since September 2025 — one of only a handful of places on earth where famine has been formally identified. Shelling of the city has repeatedly struck civilian areas. The siege has drawn in the older war in the Nuba Mountains, where the SPLM-N had fought Khartoum long before 2023, layering a decades-old conflict onto the current one.

2026 – Present · North, South and West Kordofan Theater

With Khartoum lost and Darfur secured, the RSF made Kordofan the war's main theater in 2026, contesting El Obeid, Dilling, Kadugli, and Babanusa and the supply routes between them. SAF drones struck Babanusa in West Kordofan on May 19, 2026. Diplomatic efforts ran alongside and failed: Sudan's transitional prime minister proposed an immediate ceasefire monitored by the UN, African Union, and Arab League, conditioned on full RSF withdrawal from territory it holds, and the RSF rejected it. By mid-2026 the war had settled into a partition in fact — the SAF holding Khartoum, the center and the east, the RSF holding most of Darfur and contesting Kordofan — with famine spreading and, in the UN's assessment, no corner of Sudan safe.