Women cool off under a water sprinkler during hot, sunny weather as temperatures continued to hover near 40 °C in Vienna, Austria, on June 30, 2026. (Photo: Joe Klamar/AFP)
More than two thirds of Europeans experienced temperatures of more than 35 °C during a heat wave from 15 to 30 June, according to an analysis by AFP. This comes while the continent is still poorly adapted to hot weather, more than 20 years after another record heat wave.
Areas in Europe where around 410 million people live were affected by the latest heat wave, compared to 320 million during a record heat wave between 1 and 17 August 2003.
AFP did the calculations using daily maximum temperature data from the European Drought Monitoring Center and population figures from the Joint Research Centre.
This year’s heat wave has led to thousands of additional deaths in several European countries, closed schools and music festivals, and sparked political wrangling over whether governments should encourage more widespread use of air conditioning.
Almost the entire population of mainland France and more than three-quarters of the combined populations of Spain and Italy experienced temperatures of more than 35 °C at some stage during the June heat wave. The heat wave stretched from the Iberian Peninsula to Ukraine, through the Balkans and Germany.
Temperatures have risen above 35 °C for at least 16 consecutive days in an area around the Spanish city of Lleida in Catalonia, according to an AFP analysis of data from the European Observatory.
In the wider picture, daily maximum temperatures rose above 35 °C on at least ten occasions for nearly 50 million people across Europe during the heatwave.
This includes 18 million people in central and southern France, more than 15 million in northeastern and southwestern Spain, and 12 million in northern Italy, mainly in the Po Valley.
Temperatures reached these levels less frequently in Central and Eastern Europe, with the 35 °C mark exceeded on at most three days in Poland and on at most four days in Ukraine.
Still, all-time temperature records were still broken in Germany, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary, as well as June records in the United Kingdom and Switzerland.
Average temperatures in France reached record highs, notably including the hottest nights ever recorded in the country.
