Symbolic imageThe front has shifted to Greece, where a wildfire northwest of Athens has destroyed more than 100 homes and a Sunday helicopter collision killed a two-person crew, with new flare-ups near Porto Germeno. France calls its fires under control.
This topic follows a wave of wildfires burning simultaneously in southwestern France and in central Spain during the summer of 2026. The fires are being driven by a combination of extreme heat, drought and wind, conditions that allow them to move quickly through forested and coastal areas that are heavily populated in the holiday season. On the French side, the affected zone around Bordeaux and the Cap Ferret peninsula is the same region that burned severely in 2022, when about 50,000 people were evacuated. On the Spanish side, the fires come in a year in which more than 100,000 hectares have already burned and 13 people have died, one of the worst tolls in decades. Both countries have turned to the European Union's civil protection channels for aerial firefighting support, making this as much a story about cross-border emergency response as about the fires themselves.
A wildfire northwest of Athens has destroyed more than 100 homes, and two firefighting helicopters collided on Sunday, killing the two-person crew of one aircraft. Crews now face new fire fronts near the coastal village of Porto Germeno.
Wildfires burned across Spain and France as parts of Europe baked in extreme heat, with Berlin reaching 37C on Saturday, according to FAZ. French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said the fires had been brought under control, citing the Gironde department, where the blaze created its own air currents; the New York Times found towns along the southwest coast deserted after tens of thousands of people fled.
France and Spain gained a measure of relief on Thursday after fires that forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee, though blazes continue elsewhere in Europe. The Gironde has been burning since 22 July, and the New York Times reported that officials in the worst-hit forests failed to enforce French rules requiring homeowners to clear vegetation within roughly 50 yards of their houses.
Hundreds of people were evacuated and a major incident was declared on Thursday after a wildfire spread across heathland in Suffolk, with the Sizewell B nuclear power station monitoring the blaze and an RSPB nature reserve badly damaged, the Guardian reported. Breitbart reported concern that changing winds could overwhelm the plant's filtration systems with smoke.
Two firefighters died battling a wildfire on Crete and a third was killed in the Peloponnese, while Greek crews also worked to contain blazes on Lesbos. Mega-fires threatened the Gironde department and the city of Bordeaux in France, and Spain's crisis continued even after the national emergency ended in Madrid and Ávila; scientists warn the climate crisis is getting worse.
Germany has registered close to 10,000 heat-related deaths since the start of 2026, according to a report published on Friday by the Chinese state-affiliated outlet Global Times. The figure comes during a run of heatwaves across Europe, with a fourth wave now pushing over the south.
The Greek fire department says three firefighters died while battling blazes on Crete and in the south of the mainland. In France and Spain, crews contained the large fires near Bordeaux and west of Madrid, but high winds and a fourth heatwave threaten flare-ups, and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called the next 12 hours decisive. SNCF is keeping TGV services south of Bordeaux cancelled until Sunday.
Fires in the French Gironde and in the Spanish province of Ávila have burned tens of thousands of hectares and driven hundreds of thousands of people from their homes and holiday sites. A fourth heatwave of the summer, with temperatures above 40 degrees, is forecast to reach both countries from Wednesday. Protective measures have been deployed around Seveso-classified industrial sites in the Gironde, while EU member states have sent firefighting aircraft to both countries.
Wildfires in Spain, France and now Portugal have forced roughly 375,000 people from their homes, according to The Guardian and Koha, with the largest fire in Spanish records burning 77,000 hectares and 115,000 hectares burned in France since the start of the year. The blaze in the Gironde has come within a few dozen kilometres of Bordeaux and remains uncontained after five nights. Forecasters expect a fourth heat wave since May to reach France from Tuesday, with temperatures up to 40 degrees.
Fires in the Gironde region around Bordeaux and in the mountains south-west of Madrid have driven more than 300,000 people from their homes, according to Bloomberg, in what French media and officials describe as the country's largest evacuation since the Second World War. In France alone 220,000 people are covered by evacuation orders and 42,000 hectares have burned; in Spain two fires in the Madrid and Ávila regions have merged into what FAZ calls the largest wildfire in the country's recent history. Both governments have mobilised soldiers and aircraft, while evacuated residents in Spain accuse the authorities of neglect.
Nearly 300,000 people in Spain and France have been ordered to evacuate or shelter indoors as large wildfires advance on the Madrid region and the area around Bordeaux. Two fires in the neighbouring Spanish provinces of Madrid and Ávila alone have burned some 25,000 hectares and are now being run under a single emergency command. France is deploying a converted Airbus A400M military transport as a firefighting aircraft for the first time, while Turkey, Greece, Italy and Portugal are sending help to Spain.
Fast-moving wildfires driven by extreme heat, drought and wind forced more than 25,000 people from campsites and homes around Bordeaux in southwestern France on 24 July 2026, including the Cap Ferret peninsula, while Spain declared its first national emergency over a wildfire after more than 10,000 people were evacuated near Madrid and in Ávila province. Both governments requested help through the European Union, which dispatched water-bombing aircraft. Two firefighters had already died near Bordeaux earlier in the week, and Spain counts 13 wildfire deaths so far in 2026.