After a brief respite for parts of Europe, extreme and very extreme wildfire conditions are forecast across most of southern, central and eastern Europe. The main areas of wildfire risk are in Spanish Iberia, France, the Alps, northern Italy, western Balkans, Greece, Turkey and Ukraine.

Other areas recently hit hard by wildfires in recent weeks are now at a low fire danger, including the British Isles, Baltic states, Poland and most of Scandinavia. Above average rainfall is expected to continue across most of these areas, with barely a drop forecasted elsewhere.

A new visualisation from Copernicus EU shows the extent of fire across Europe and North Africa during the peak summer period of July and August. There were large fires across Spain and Portugal, southern France, Italy, Greece, the Balkans, Ukraine and Algeria.

This visualisation uses data from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), part of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service, and shows fires larger than 30 hectares between 1 July and 31 August 2026. This only shows total area burnt, and not other impacts.

Across the area shown, more than 1.2 million hectares have been identified as affected. The circles highlight larger burnt areas, including those associated with 19 fires, each exceeding 10,000 ha. Smaller burnt areas are shown as orange polygons.

2026 has been a big year for fire across Europe with 647,375 hectares burnt. But just not as big as the record breaking 2025, which had 994,419 hectares burnt over the same period. The number of fires is slightly less too – 1913 this year, 1986 at the same time last year.

It is not clear from the data why this chart shows 647,375 hectares burnt since the start of the year, but the above chart shows 1.2 million hectares “identified as affected” in just two months.

The European Unition last week increased its support to fight wildfires in Serbia – 4 helicopters from the RescEU fleet based in Czechia, Romania and Slovakia, were mobilised, alongside ground firefighting teams from Germany and Romania.