Europe is set to experience another heatwave next week, with temperatures in Spain expected to hit close to 40°C.
It also points to a trend of popular European getaways getting dangerously hot, making them unsafe to travel to for summer holidays.
The highest temperature ever recorded in Europe was 48.8°C in Sicily in 2021. But there’s a chance we could soon hit the 50°C threshold, said Liz Bently, chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society.
“We’ve seen temperatures over 40°C already [this year], and we’re only in June”, Bently said. “We’ve never seen temperatures that high across Europe that early in the year, so it does set the scene for a record-breaking summer.”
“As our climate continues to warm, I think it’s looking pretty likely that in the next decade we will see 50 degrees somewhere across the European continent,” she said. “It’s likely that that threshold will be broken in the next decade.”
With a “super” El Niño – which supercharges extreme weather – likely to develop this summer, Bill McGuire, professor of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at UCL, believes the 50°C European summer could come even sooner.
“Europe could easily see 50°C temperatures this year and/or next,” said McGuire, who also wrote The Fate of the World: a History and Future of the Climate Crisis.
“Once the 50°C barrier is reached, it will happen ever more frequently as our planet continues to heat up,” he added.
Where the heat could be worst
Countries around southern Europe and the Mediterranean – popular tourism hotspots like Spain, Portugal and Greece – are most likely to see 50°C summers soon, Bently said.
Where you are in relation to the sea also matters, she said: “Places that are more prone to get the heat are inland, so central Spain. Usually, the sea temperatures tend to give a cooling effect.”
“Usually the temperature is a little bit lower as you go with altitude, so you’re probably looking at more low-lying cities so Seville. Madrid’s possibly another one,” she added.
Copernicus’s European State of Climate Report, published this year, found that Europe is warming faster than any other continent, at more than twice the global average rate.
This could mean changes to future summer holiday plans.
A survey by InsureandGo conducted in May found that three in four UK holidaymakers believe that familiar hotspots like Greece, Spain and Cyprus will be too hot to visit by 2030.
The heat is already pushing Brits into “shoulder-season” holidays, with 27 per cent of those surveyed saying they would look at travelling in spring or early autumn, instead of July and August.
Malcolm Mistry, assistant professor in climate modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, isn’t surprised about this movement towards off-season travel.
“As extreme weather becomes more frequent – particularly in Southern Europe around the Mediterranean – we may see a fundamental shift in seasonal heat advisories and alerts altering tourist behaviour,” he said.
“For instance, travelers who generally make holiday plans in advance, could prefer visiting such regions outside of the traditional peak summer months to avoid the uncomfortable temperatures.”
A survey published by Trip.com in April found that users were increasingly seeking “coolcations” to escape the heat, with searches for holidays in places like Iceland, Norway, Slovenia, Switzerland and Wales in June to August 2026 nearly doubling compared to last year.
Dangers of heat
Extreme heat can have a serious impact. They increase the chances of wildfires, like the ones seen in Greece in 2024. Without the right preventions, they can also cause serious health risks.
“We know that once the temperature goes above 28°C the mortality rate increases. If it got to 50°C, you’d see thousands, if not tens of thousands, of excess deaths due to the heat,” Bently said.
“50°C threshold is something that we never would have predicted we’d have reached across Europe, and therefore the infrastructure across the Mediterranean countries is not geared up for temperatures that high,” she added, referring to the possibility of power cuts, roads melting and travel delays.
McGuire warned that extreme heat could soon happen at home, too: “Bear in mind that 40°C+ will also become ever more common in British summers too, with 45°C and above increasingly likely,” he said.
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