Record EU wildfires burnt more than 1 million hectares in 2025

7:27 am on 22 August 2025

Local residents try to extinguish the fire of a burning house during a wildfire in Kryoneri, near Athens on July 26, 2025. Greece has already been hit by a series of heatwave-fuelled wildfires this summer, including one that forced the closure of the Acropolis in Athens, its top archaeological monument, earlier this month. (Photo by Angelos TZORTZINIS / AFP)

Local residents try to extinguish the fire of a burning house during a wildfire in Kryoneri, near Athens on 26 July, 2025. Photo: AFP / ANGELOS TZORTZINIS

Wildfires have so far ravaged more than one million hectares (2.5 million acres) in the European Union in 2025, a record since statistics began in 2006, according to an AFP analysis of official data.

Surpassing the annual record of 988,524 hectares burnt in 2017, the figure reached 1,015,731 hectares by midday Thursday, representing an area larger than Cyprus.

This calculation is based on a total compiled by AFP from estimates by country from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), at a time when Spain and Portugal are still battling wildfires.

Four countries in the European Union - Spain, Cyprus, Germany, and Slovakia - have already experienced their worst year in two decades of existing data.

Spain is struggling with numerous fires in the west of the country, which have claimed four lives. By far the most affected EU country by fires, with more than 400,000 hectares burnt, Spain accounts for nearly 40 percent of the EU total.

Portugal, which holds the unenviable EU record of 563,530 hectares burnt in 2017, is the second-most affected EU country. As of August 21, it has never had an area of this size (nearly 274,000 hectares) burnt so early in the year.

Romania follows with 126,000 hectares while in France 35,600 hectares of forest have been reduced to ashes, mostly in the southern Aude region, which was ravaged by a massive fire in early August.

A wildfire burns near a highway in A Gudina, northwestern Spain, on August 15, 2025. All of Spain was on a heatwave alert today, while the weather agency warned that much of the country was at "very high to extreme risk" from wildfires. Nearly two weeks of high temperatures have left Spain sweltering, and today spread to Cantabria, which has so far been spared from the searing heat. Temperatures in the northwestern region were forecast to pass 40C, the national meteorological agency, Aemet, said. Spain has endured a devastating season of fires, with 157,501 hectares (389,193 acres) reduced to ashes since the start of the year, according to data from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS). (Photo by CESAR MANSO / AFP)

A wildfire burns near a highway in A Gudina, northwestern Spain, on August 15, 2025. Photo: AFP / Cesar Manso

These calculations by EFFIS, a component of the European climate monitor Copernicus, only take into account fires that have burnt areas of at least 30 hectares.

Outside the EU, Britain is also experiencing a record year, following fires in April during an early heatwave, as well as in northern Scotland at the end of June.

In the Balkans, Serbia is also recording its worst year since statistics began.

By 19 August, forest fires in 22 of the 27 EU countries had already emitted 35 megatons of CO2 since January, an unprecedented amount at this point in the year according to EFFIS, indicating the annual record set in 2017 of 41 megatons could be surpassed.

During the previous record year, in 2017, wildfires had killed more than 200 people in the EU, notably in Portugal, Italy, Spain and France.

In 2025, the provisional EU death toll due to fires is 10, according to an AFP count: two people dead in Cyprus, one in France, and seven in the Iberian Peninsula.

- AFP