Wildfires in Europe outpace the worst year on record

Summer 2026 is producing, according to the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, a wildfire-burned area that already exceeds the pace of the same period in 2025, the worst year on record for wildfires in the European Union.

Period	Hectares burned
As of August 5, 2026	505,683
Total for year 2025 (record)	1,034,552

The 2026 figure is partial — it stops at August 5, with nearly half the season still ahead — and is already higher than what was recorded for the same period in 2025. The Joint Research Centre does not provide, in the available excerpts, the exact figure for the area burned in 2025 as of the same date of August 5, which makes it difficult to precisely calculate the percentage gap between the two years; it remains the case, however, that the 2026 pace is described as exceeding that of the year holding the absolute record.

Wildfires are not solely an environmental phenomenon. By August 4, 2026, they had already caused the death of at least 17 civilians, six firefighters and two helicopter crew members involved in firefighting operations, and had forced around 330,000 people to leave their homes between Spain and France. This is a number of displaced people that gives a sense of how directly the phenomenon has affected the daily lives of entire communities in the two countries, in addition to putting pressure on national civil protection systems.

Drought is adding to the complexity of the picture. River flow forecasts produced by the European Copernicus system indicate low to extremely low levels in France, the Alpine region and Eastern Europe for the month of August. Reduced river flow does not only mean less water available for agriculture and industrial cooling: it also makes the land more vulnerable to wildfires, because dry vegetation becomes more easily flammable fuel, in a cycle that feeds on itself as the hot season progresses.

The picture drawn by the Joint Research Centre thus combines three mutually reinforcing elements: a burned area exceeding the pace of the record year, an already heavy human toll at the start of August, and water forecasts that offer no sign of improvement in the coming weeks. The available data stop at August 5 for wildfires and at early-month forecasts for rivers: developments in the second half of August, traditionally the most critical period for wildfire risk in southern Europe, remain the variable that will determine whether 2026 will actually surpass the absolute record set in 2025.