Hottest Summer

France experienced its hottest summer on record in 2026, marked by heatwaves, drought and massive wildfires, the environment minister said on Thursday. "We have just lived through the hottest summer ever recorded since measurements began in 1900," Monique Barbut said at a presentation of the summer climate report.

France joins Belgium and Britain in recording their hottest-ever summers after a season that scorched Europe, the globe's fastest warming continent. The weather service Meteo-France said the country saw 53 days of heatwave conditions over the summer, a "completely unprecedented number".

23-day heatwave

France endured multiple severe heatwaves, including one in late June that set a new intensity record. Another, stretching from late July into August, matched the record for the country's longest heatwave, lasting 23 days, a mark previously set in 1983. By the end of August, forest fires had already burned six times more area than the average of the last twenty years.

"The summer of 2026 will go down in history," the minister said. "The question we must now ask ourselves is how it will be remembered. As the first in a long series of summers that continue to break records. Or as a moment when we rose to the challenge of adaptation and mitigation." In Paris, where few homes have air conditioning, locals taped foil survival blankets over their windows to keep out the sun.