{"id":10445,"date":"2026-07-29T05:40:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T05:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/10445\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T05:40:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T05:40:10","slug":"wildfires-europe-on-track-for-worst-year-on-record-as-burned-area-reaches-size-of-luxembourg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/10445\/","title":{"rendered":"Wildfires: Europe on track for worst year on record as burned area reaches size of Luxembourg"},"content":{"rendered":"

By&nbspAlessio Dell’Anna<\/a>&nbsp&&nbspvideo by L\u00e9o Arnoux<\/p>\n

\n Published on
\n 29\/07\/2026 – 7:30 GMT+2\n <\/p>\n

Spain is the EU country that’s been worst hit by this year’s wildfires, recording the highest share of burned land in Europe relative to its size in 2026.<\/p>\n

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That’s more than 200,000 hectares, or around 0.4% of the country\u2019s territory, according to the EU’s Earth observation programme Copernicus.<\/a> <\/p>\n

On Sunday, Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez warned that difficult hours lay ahead, after more than 90,000 people <\/a>were forced to evacuate areas around Madrid and \u00c1vila.<\/p>\n

Neighbouring Portugal is also facing a severe fire season, recording the EU’s second-highest proportion of burned land, at 0.3%.<\/p>\n

On Monday, every district in northern and central Portugal, along with the southern district of Faro in the Algarve, was placed under the highest fire risk alert.<\/p>\n

Yet some non-EU countries, like Ukraine or Montenegro, reported even worse rates.<\/p>\n

How much damage have the 2026 wildfires done?<\/p>\n

France was another country hit hard, with around 260,000 people evacuated, and the southwestern department of Gironde suffering the worst damage.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the EU as a whole could be bound for its worst wildfire season on record.<\/p>\n

The bloc has already endured around 1,200 fires in 2026, which is more than double the annual average of 569, says the EU’s Forest Fire Information System.<\/p>\n

So far, more than 250,000 hectares<\/a> have gone up in flames, according to figures from the European Commission. To put that into perspective, that\u2019s roughly the size of Luxembourg.<\/p>\n

With much of the summer still ahead, the total is on track to pass 2025’s record of more than 270,000 hectares.<\/p>\n

How are the fires affecting the environment?<\/p>\n

Copernicus estimates that the 2026 wildfires have already spread more than 8 tonnes of CO\u2082 across the EU. <\/p>\n

An average citizen emits around 5.55 tonnes over a whole year.<\/p>\n

As “below-average rainfall” is also expected for this week, the situation is likely to get even worse, with “the strongest deficit stretching from France through the Alps and into the Balkans”.<\/p>\n

“Above-average rainfall spans Scandinavia and northern Europe, with the strongest surplus over Scandinavia,” Copernicus said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By&nbspAlessio Dell’Anna&nbsp&&nbspvideo by L\u00e9o Arnoux Published on 29\/07\/2026 – 7:30 GMT+2 Spain is the EU country that’s been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[2497,3140,649,5,3139,484,3138],"class_list":["post-10445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-luxembourg","tag-euronews-compare","tag-forest-fires","tag-france","tag-luxembourg","tag-portugal-wildfires","tag-spain","tag-wildfires"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@lu\/117001665155305752","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}