During the past 20 years, Europe has seen an increase in the area of land burned annually. The worst wildfire year on record occurred in 2025, when more than 1 million hectares burned across the European Union.
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The 20-year average through 2025 stands at about 388,000 hectares annually, according to the European Forest Fire Information System.
CNN is monitoring Europe’s largest active wildfires. Information on this page is updated periodically during the day.
France and Spain are worst affected
Hundreds of thousands of people in France and Spain have been evacuated from their homes, and wildfires have spread farther than they do on average in an entire year.
Firefighters are battling wildfires close to the cities of Bordeaux and Madrid. France says the fires are far from over and could burn for months, while Spanish authorities yesterday said more than 131 square miles of land had been scorched by the fires near Madrid, as exhausted evacuees await a return home.
The wildfires raging in France are so intense they have created “fire clouds,” a never-before-seen phenomenon in the country, authorities say. Temperatures will climb to above-average highs across fire-ravaged areas of France and Spain over the next week, with no signs of rainfall in sight.
These wildfires are not “a succession of isolated events” but “the most painful expression of a climate emergency,” said Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
A rapidly warming climate – Europe is the fastest-warming continent on the planet – and abrupt shifts from wet to dry conditions have contributed to more intense and destructive fire seasons in recent years, particularly in Western and Southern Europe. The fires erupt across the continent.
