Europe is in the grip of its most deadly heatwave of 2026, with at least 252 confirmed or estimated deaths across the continent as record temperatures shatter historical benchmarks in France, Spain and Italy. The scale of the crisis has prompted health agencies to issue their highest-level alerts, with 101 million people expected to face temperatures exceeding 35C on Thursday alone.
In Spain, the heatwave has been linked to at least 212 deaths between Sunday and Wednesday, according to estimates from the MoMo monitoring system, a public institute that compiles daily death statistics and compares them with historical forecasts. The same system recorded an excess mortality of 98 deaths for the equivalent four-day period in 2025, during what was itself the hottest summer on record in Spain. The number of heat-related deaths in Spain between May and September 2025 reached 3,832, an increase of 87.6% from the same period in 2024.
Mainland Spain recorded its highest daily average temperatures for June since at least 1950, with Monday’s figure of 28.08C followed by 28.17C on Tuesday. Parts of northern Spain, including Cantabria and the Basque Country, which are usually spared the harshest heat, saw temperatures surge past 40C.
France: Hottest Day Ever Recorded
France registered its hottest day on record during the heatwave, with temperatures in some areas approaching 45C. The French weather agency Meteo-France put three-quarters of the country under a red alert for extreme heat starting at midday on Thursday. About 63 million people in mainland France were expected to experience temperatures of more than 30C on Thursday.
The human cost in France has been particularly acute in the water. At least 40 people have drowned since the heatwave began in the middle of last week, many of them teenagers swimming in unsupervised rivers and lakes. French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu confirmed the figure on Wednesday. Among the victims are two children, aged two and four, who were left in vehicles. A three-year-old was found dead in a car in the Paris suburb of Saint-Gratien on Thursday, the third such death of a child in a vehicle this week.
In the usually temperate Brittany region of northwest France, a heat-related equipment failure knocked out power to tens of thousands of households, leaving them without electric fans during the hottest days. Over 300 people have been treated for heat exhaustion in France, with two further heat-related deaths confirmed on Thursday.
Italy and Germany
Italy is also experiencing severe conditions, with 48 million people facing temperatures above 30C on Thursday. German authorities warned of at least two heat-related deaths, with 70 million people in Germany expected to experience temperatures exceeding 30C. Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Croatia are all affected by the heat dome that has settled over western and central Europe.
According to calculations by the AFP news agency, based on forecasts from the German weather service and 2025 population projections from the EU’s Joint Research Centre, more than 380 million people across Europe, representing nearly two-thirds of the continent’s population, faced temperatures exceeding 30C on Thursday. That figure was up from 94 million people facing temperatures above 35C on Wednesday.
The Science Behind the Heatwave
The immediate cause of the extreme temperatures is a “heat dome”, an area of high pressure that becomes stuck over a region, trapping warm air underneath it and preventing cooler air from moving in. While it is difficult to link any individual extreme weather event directly to climate change, scientists say climate change makes heatwaves more frequent, more intense and longer-lasting.
Over the past 30 years, Europe has been warming at a rate of 0.56C per decade, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, making it the fastest-warming continent on Earth. The UN warned this week that global average temperatures were likely to continue at or near record levels this year and for the next four years.
The pattern of excess mortality seen in Spain this week mirrors what happened across Europe in the summer of 2003, when an estimated 70,000 people died in a heatwave that at the time was considered exceptional. Climate scientists now say that what was exceptional in 2003 is becoming routine, and that the summers of the 2020s represent a new baseline rather than an outlier.
The Response
Governments across Europe have activated heat emergency plans, opening cooling centres in public buildings, distributing water and issuing public health guidance. In France, the government has faced renewed criticism over its longstanding resistance to air conditioning, a cultural and political debate that has intensified as temperatures have risen. Spain’s civil protection agency has urged people to avoid outdoor activity during the hottest hours and to check on elderly neighbours.
In the UK, the Met Office issued only its second-ever red extreme heat warning, covering parts of England and Wales until Thursday evening. The UK Health Security Agency issued a corresponding red heat health alert, with Professor Robin May, its chief scientific officer, warning that the threat extended beyond the traditionally vulnerable groups to “otherwise healthy people in their prime of life”.
The death toll across Europe is expected to rise further as the full impact of the heatwave on excess mortality is assessed in the coming days and weeks. Historical data shows that the true toll of a heatwave is often not fully understood until mortality statistics are compiled and compared with seasonal averages, a process that can take several weeks after the event.
