French Environment Minister: Summer 2026 to be the Hottest in France's History

French Environment Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher announced on Thursday that the summer of 2026 witnessed in France “was the hottest on record since monitoring and assessment began in 1990.”

In a statement while presenting the “Summer Climate Report,” which covers the period from June to August according to meteorological experts’ classification, Minister Pannier-Runacher noted that France experienced “its hottest summer in history this year, accompanied by heatwaves, droughts, and massive forest fires, and I can confirm that we have just lived through the hottest summer ever recorded in France.”

She added, “By the end of last August, forest fires had consumed an area six times the average burned area over the past 20 years.”

She emphasized, “The question we must now ask ourselves is how this summer will be remembered: Will it be recalled as the first in a long series of summers that continue to break records, or as a moment when we rise to the challenge of adaptation and mitigation by reducing greenhouse gas emissions?”

France thus joins Belgium and the United Kingdom in recording the hottest summer of the year, following a season marked by extreme temperatures across Europe, which is considered one of the continents experiencing the fastest rates of temperature rise in the world.