There is a fire burning in southwest France that covers an area four times the size of Paris, and on Wednesday it was still not contained. Temperatures in the Gironde were forecast to hit 40 C. Firefighters who had spent a calm night gaining ground knew the afternoon could take it all back.
That single sentence is most of what you need to know about Europe’s summer of 2026: record heat, exhausted crews, and fires that behave in ways the people fighting them have not seen before.
Gironde: France’s largest peacetime evacuation
At its peak, the Gironde blaze west of Bordeaux forced 220,000 people from their homes and holiday lets. Tens of thousands have since been allowed back, but on Tuesday authorities pushed roughly 4,000 more people out of Atlantic coast tourist sites as the heat returned, widening what may be the largest peacetime evacuation in French history, according to The Associated Press.
More than 2,200 firefighters and over 20 aircraft are mobilised, with crews sent from across France and from European partners. At the command post in Lège, officers track three danger zones: northern Cap-Ferret, the wooded corridor running through Marcheprime, Cestas and Saint-Jean-d’Illac, and a military site near Martignas where a serious new outbreak forced a major deployment. The local fire commander’s tactic is blunt: hit every new wisp of smoke immediately, and hit it hard.
Bordeaux turned its exhibition centre into an emergency shelter; 661 people slept there in a single night. The Gironde prefect allowed 60,000 evacuees back into three suburbs the fire never reached while thousands of others were being told to leave the coast: two opposite movements on the same day, which tells you how unstable the situation is. Her assessment was simply that they are not out of the woods.
A firestorm that made its own lightning
At its most violent, the Gironde fire built a towering black thundercloud above itself, lit from within and crackling with electricity. It threw lightning, generated its own winds and started fresh fires well beyond the main front.
Meteorologists call this a pyrocumulonimbus, a thunderstorm created by the heat of a fire rather than by ordinary weather. It was the first ever recorded in France. Fires that generate their own weather are close to impossible to fight conventionally, because the rules crews rely on about wind direction and spread stop applying.
Spain: the biggest fire in its recorded history
Spain is bracing for its fourth heat wave of the summer with several blazes still out of control, including the largest in the country’s recorded history. Firefighters backed by military emergency brigades and water-dropping aircraft have made enough progress for authorities to start lifting evacuation and stay-at-home orders for thousands of residents, and people in ten towns have begun going home.
It has been a brutal season there. A fire in the Sierra de los Filabres area of Almería province tore through a remote community and killed at least 12 people. A separate blaze in Guadalajara burned more than 32,000 hectares. Some 70,000 people were evacuated in central Spain alone. Combined with France, roughly 330,000 people were displaced across the two countries at the height of the crisis.
The heat itself has been the bigger killer
Wildfires dominate the pictures, but the quieter emergency is the temperature. Europe’s heat arrived exceptionally early this year and hit exceptionally hard. Emerging mortality figures suggest well over 10,000 more people died at the height of the heat wave than would normally have been expected across the continent.
France recorded its hottest day ever and reported roughly 5,700 excess deaths during its historic June heat wave. The Eiffel Tower and the Louvre cut visiting hours. Trains, concerts and sporting fixtures were cancelled. Records fell in Switzerland, Denmark and the Czech Republic. Hospitals around Paris have since been upgrading their heat defences, having found themselves rationing ice to cool patients.
Why the fires are worse now
The mechanism is not mysterious. Extreme heat pulls moisture out of vegetation and drops humidity, turning grass, brush and forest litter into fuel that ignites faster and burns hotter. Wind then lifts embers over firebreaks and starts new fronts where no crew is standing.
Drought now covers mainland France and Corsica, with soils approaching the record dryness of August 2022, according to Météo-France, which flagged Wednesday as the hottest and driest day of the week with elevated fire danger in every region. More than 1,160 square kilometres have burned across France this year, the Interior Ministry says.
The wider context comes from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service: Europe is the fastest-warming continent on earth, heating at more than double the global average, and western Europe has just recorded its hottest June on record. Smoke from the Gironde and Landes fires has also pushed both departments into a particulate pollution episode, which is its own public health problem.
Elsewhere in France there has been some relief: fires in Landes and Var have been “fixed”, meaning their advance is halted, leaving Gironde as the country’s main battle. Greece, meanwhile, is trying something new, leaning on satellite technology to spot ignitions early.
The bigger picture, and why it matters in India
Europe’s crisis is the visible end of a pattern that shows up differently in different places. In South Asia the same warming atmosphere expresses itself less as fire and more as erratic, violently concentrated rainfall, which is why our monsoon coverage keeps returning to the same theme; see how the monsoon season actually works and the recent IMD heavy rainfall alerts.
And the energy question sits underneath all of it. The pace at which grids move away from fossil fuels is the single biggest variable in how hot the next few decades get, which we explore in our explainer on solar, wind and the race to a cleaner grid.
Frequently asked questions
How big is the France wildfire near Bordeaux?
The Gironde fire covers an area roughly four times the size of Paris and remained uncontained on 29 July 2026. Across France, more than 1,160 square kilometres have burned this year.
How many people were evacuated?
The Gironde blaze displaced 220,000 people at its peak, and about 330,000 were displaced across France and Spain combined at the height of the emergency.
How many people has Europe’s heat wave killed?
Early estimates suggest well over 10,000 excess deaths across the continent at the height of the heat, including around 5,700 in France during its June heat wave. These figures are still being revised.
What is a pyrocumulonimbus cloud?
It is a thunderstorm generated by the heat of a wildfire rather than normal weather. It can produce lightning and strong winds that start new fires. The Gironde fire produced the first one ever recorded in France.
Is Europe warming faster than the rest of the world?
Yes. According to the EU’s Copernicus climate service, Europe is the fastest-warming continent, heating at more than twice the global average rate.
Details in this report reflect official statements and wire reporting available on 29 July 2026. Fire perimeters, evacuation numbers and mortality estimates are all being revised as the season continues.
