Summer in Europe is no longer just a season of heatwaves and holidays. It is also, increasingly, a season of fire. Following the pattern of recent years, 2026 saw huge fires break out across the continent, fuelled by weeks of hot, dry weather.
Fires in France and Spain hit the headlines, but the UK, Belgium, Germany, Portugal and Italy have all also seen fierce blazes sweep through forests, grasslands and nature reserves. Since the start of the year, almost 650,000 hectares of land have burned across the European Union, according to the European Commission, the result of over 1913 separate large wildfires across the bloc. Canadian wildfires are reducing solar power generation in Europe “Europe’s wildfires this summer have been extremely severe and destructive, and reached new corners of our continent,” Wopke Hoekstra, European commissioner for climate, net zero and clean growth, wrote on LinkedIn at the end of August.
In Europe, the area of land burned so far this year is almost double the long-term average. It is a similar story in the US, where the area of land burned so far this year is 163 per cent of the 10-year average. But although this year has been bad by past standards, it still doesn’t come close to surpassing the devastation wildfires wreaked in 2025, still by far the most severe year on record for Europe, with more than 1 million hectares burned.
Instead, what has been notable about this year’s blazes is where they have appeared. Fires have burned across the European continent, but in southern Europe, traditionally the most fire-prone region, it has been relatively quiet. Northern and western European countries, however, like France, Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK – which aren’t used to dealing with severe wildfires – have suffered intense burns.
For some, these have been larger and more widespread than what has been ever seen before. In England and Wales, for example, fire and rescue services have responded to 1132 wildfires so far this year, outstripping the total for the whole of 2025, which was itself a record year. The fires tore through homes, closed major roads, and crept perilously close to a nuclear power plant, all in a country better-known for its rain than its heat.
The conditions in Europe this year have been perfect for wildfires. An unusually wet winter encouraged rampant growth of grasslands, shrublands and forest understories. In May, the weather then shifted abruptly, bringing heatwaves in rapid succession and very little rainfall across swathes of the continent.
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