Record wildfires in Spain and France fuelled by climate change, studies show, as July heat shatters records

Record heat and historic fires

Spain closed July 2026 tied with 2022 as its hottest July since official records began in the mid-20th century. The average daily temperature across peninsular Spain reached 25.7°C, 2.6°C above the 1991–2020 normal, according to data from the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet). Three heatwaves struck during the month, the last still active as July ended. The extreme heat helped drive a disastrous wildfire month: around 150,000 hectares burned and 26 large fires ignited, including a deadly blaze in Los Gallardos and a vast fire across Ávila, Madrid and Toledo that triggered Spain's first-ever national emergency for a wildfire.

France suffered its largest fire in at least 50 years in the Gironde department near Bordeaux. Since igniting on 22 July, the fire consumed more than 42,000 hectares and forced the evacuation of 250,000 people. Flames came within 15 kilometres of Bordeaux itself, though Mayor Thomas Cazenave repeatedly said an evacuation of the city of 270,000 was not planned. Across the European Union, over 400,000 hectares had burned by late July, already surpassing the 346,836 hectares burned in the same period of 2025.

Climate change supercharged the conditions

A rapid attribution study by World Weather Attribution (WWA) published on 30 July concluded that human-caused climate change made the extreme fire weather conditions at least twice as likely in southwestern France and at least 20 times more likely in central Spain. The researchers analysed the Daily Severity Rating (DSR), which combines temperature, humidity, fuel dryness and wind to estimate how difficult a fire is to control once it starts. In the current climate, events of this intensity are expected roughly once every 20 years in southwestern France and once every six years in central Spain. The WWA team noted that wet winters followed by dry springs are becoming a key driver of wildfire risk in the affected regions.

Fire weather days have doubled

A separate study published in Scientific Reports on the same day examined fire weather trends across Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece from 1981 to 2025. It found that the intensity of the key fire-driving conditions (heat, dryness and wind) increased by up to 50% in parts of Spain and France when comparing 2016–2025 with 1981–2010. The number of summer days with highly favourable fire-spread conditions rose from fewer than 10 to about 25 in some areas of the Iberian Peninsula.

1981–2010 average10

2016–2025 average25

1981–2010 average

10 days

2016–2025 average

25 days

Data from the article text

Raúl Cordero, a researcher at the University of Groningen and co-author of the study, said improved prevention and firefighting had cut the annual number of fires in Spain from over 20,000 in the early 2000s to under 10,000, but that progress is now being overwhelmed.

“That is no longer enough in the current climate context.”

A landscape primed to burn

Beyond the warming atmosphere, experts point to decades of land abandonment as a second powerful driver. The decline of agriculture across southern Europe has replaced mosaics of pasture and ploughed fields with dense, continuous wild vegetation that burns intensely during hot, dry summers. Emilio Chuvieco, professor of geography at the University of Alcalá, stressed that both factors matter.

“It is necessary to take climate change into account, but social changes are also very important.”

Jennifer K. Balch of the University of Colorado Boulder added that the global picture is shifting.

“We are seeing more extreme fires all over the world.”

What comes next

French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged the scale of the challenge, saying the country would need to "replant and rebuild a different forest" and adapt to "the structural conditions of climate change and the pressure of urbanisation and tourism." Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said 70% of the fires were deliberately set, with 275 arrests made since the start of the season.

Climatologist Jean-Pascal Van Ypersele, former vice-chair of the IPCC, warned that mass evacuations like the one in Gironde will become more common as long as emissions remain unchecked.

“I fear we will see mass evacuations like these more and more often. As long as we do not take climate change seriously and reduce carbon dioxide emissions, large-scale fires like those in Gironde, Madrid and Ávila will become more and more frequent.”