Western Europe's summer 2026 was the hottest on record

According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), in its European Summer Review 2026, summer 2026 in Western Europe reached an average surface temperature of 21.69°C, 2.54°C above the average for the 1991-2020 reference period, surpassing the previous record set in 2003, as reported in the Copernicus document and picked up by Meteo.it and News Prima.

The figure fits into a precise scale defined by the European service: the comparison is not with just any year, but with the thirty-year climatological average (1991-2020), and with the previous absolute record, that of 2003, which summer 2026 has surpassed. Copernicus also measures how much of the continental territory reached historic milestones: 37% recorded an absolute record for average daily, monthly or seasonal temperature, while 22% set seasonal records.

A second indicator concerns not air temperature itself, but heat stress as perceived by the human body, measured using the UTCI index: 52% of European territory — also an absolute record — was affected by heat stress classified as “very strong,” corresponding to a perceived temperature equal to or above 38°C. In Western Europe, 41 days of strong thermal stress were counted, five more than the previous record, also set in 2003.

The explicit limit of the data concerns geographic scope: the figures on average temperature and days of heat stress refer specifically to Western Europe, not the entire continent, while the indicators on the percentage of territory with absolute records are calculated across the whole of the European continent. Copernicus thus distinguishes between a regional measure (Western Europe) and a continental one, a detail that should be kept in mind when reading the two sets of figures side by side.