Schools closed, alcohol banned and trains cancelled: Europe’s intensifying heatwave is bringing daily life to a standstill.
Temperatures are expected to soar as high as 45°C in parts of Spain, where the first official heatwave of 2026 began on Sunday with red and orange weather alerts across the country.
More than half of France is also on red alert as the country suffers its second extreme heat event of the year, with heat-related deaths already recorded over the weekend. The UK, too, is under a severe high temperature warning, with highs of 38°C anticipated in the south. Germany, Italy, Portugal and Switzerland are among the other countries also facing extreme heat.
“Human-driven climate change has provided the springboard for this event, loading the atmosphere with extra heat and making extreme temperatures far more intense than they would have been in the past,” Akshay Deoras, a senior researcher at the University of Reading's National Centre for Atmospheric Science in the UK tells French news agency AFP.
More than 62,000 people died from heat-related causes across Europe during 2024 – the continent’s hottest year on record – a figure that experts warn will rise as temperatures continue to climb.
