More than 1 million hectares of land burnt across the EU in 2025 in the bloc’s most destructive wildfire season on record.
The total area was roughly the size of Cyprus, according to figures from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), which uses satellite monitoring to track fires and is managed by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, the Commission announced on Tuesday.
EFFIS recorded 7,783 wildfires across 25 EU countries during the year.
The season started early, with more than 100,000 hectares already burnt by the end of March.
A prolonged heatwave in August coincided with 22 major fires in Portugal and Spain that burned 460,585 hectares — close to half of the EU’s total burnt area.
Fires spread beyond the EU
Outside the EU, 2.2 million hectares burned across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, with Ukraine accounting for 30% of the total burnt area and 39% of all fires tracked by EFFIS.
The European Commission adopted a new strategy on 25 March 2026 covering prevention, preparedness, response and recovery.
Measures listed include strengthening early warning and monitoring through EFFIS and Copernicus — the EU’s Earth observation satellite programme — and boosting firefighting capacity through an EU firefighting aircraft fleet, the pre-positioning of firefighters and a planned European firefighting hub in Cyprus.
