Swiss glaciers lose 5.5% of ice volume in 2026 as five-year melt reaches 20%

Second-highest annual loss on record

A joint report released on 30 September 2026 by the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network (GLAMOS) and the Swiss Academy of Sciences recorded a 5.5% loss in glacier ice volume across Switzerland in 2026. The decline represents the second-largest annual percentage loss on record, surpassed only by 2022 when Saharan dust darkened the snowpack and accelerated solar absorption. GLAMOS glaciologists based their findings on comprehensive September surveys of 23 reference glaciers, extrapolating the data across all 1,288 glacier formations in Switzerland. As a result of sustained melting, total glacier ice volume in Switzerland has shrunk to roughly one third of what was measured in 2003, when a summer heatwave caused a 3.5% single-season volume loss.

“Alpine glaciers have no chance of surviving in the long term under such conditions.”

Decadal acceleration and heatwaves

The 2026 thaw followed a winter with low snowfall and Switzerland's hottest June, July, and August since official national record-keeping began in 1864, according to the Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology. Intense heatwaves in May and June stripped away protective snow cover unusually early, exposing older bare ice to direct solar radiation. GLAMOS director Matthias Huss noted that winter snow serves two critical roles: shielding older ice from ablation and providing the mass necessary to form new ice at high elevations. Over the past decade, melt rates have accelerated rapidly. Swiss glaciers lost 10% of their volume between 1990 and 2000, but shed 27% over the ten years leading up to 2026. From 2021 to 2026 alone, glaciers lost nearly 20% of their total ice volume, a five-year loss rate more than twice as high as any previously recorded five-year period.

1990–200010%

2016–202627%

1990–2000

10 %

2016–2026

27 %

Data from the article text

Field measurements at key alpine sites

Field teams recorded average ice thickness drops between 2.5 and 4 metres across Swiss glaciers in 2026. At the Glacier de Tsanfleuron, average thickness dropped by more than 4 metres. On the Scex Rouge glacier at nearly 3,000 metres elevation, a four-metre aluminium measuring stake installed flush with the ice in late July stood with more than three metres exposed above the surface by late September, leading glaciologists to estimate the glacier could vanish entirely within 10 to 15 years. The Aletsch Glacier, the largest ice body in the Alps at nearly 23 kilometres long and 76 square kilometres in area, registered its largest single-year melt on record. At the Konkordia-Hütte, constructed roughly 150 years ago near the ice margin, visitors must now climb a long steel staircase to enter because the glacier surface has dropped far below the original foundation.

“Now we are in this new world, in this future, where glaciers are just melting away.”

Hydrological impacts and slope instability

Between July and September 2026, melting glaciers discharged approximately 2.2 trillion litres of water, equivalent to more than four times the annual drinking water consumption of all Swiss households. While high summer runoff temporarily buffered river systems during dry spells, glaciologists warned that the progressive reduction in ice mass will diminish future freshwater reserves relied upon for alpine agriculture and hydroelectric generation. Thinning ice also destabilizes surrounding mountainsides. In southern Switzerland, a glacier slide on 2 May 2025 destroyed parts of the evacuated village of Blatten and left one person missing, while similar cryosphere instability triggered deadly flooding along a collapsed Himalayan slope in Nepal in August 2026.