Europe’s Wildfire Area Could Nearly Triple by 2100 Under High Emissions

The study’s central metric is fire weather: the combination of atmospheric conditions that makes vegetation more flammable and fire spread more likely. That matters because the 39% and 192% estimates should not be read as the direct result of one factor alone or as a prediction that every region will experience the same increase. Local vegetation, ignition patterns, land use and emergency capacity also influence the final burned area.

What prevention and firefighting can—and cannot—do

The study finds that continued improvements in fire-management capacity could substantially moderate the projected increase. In the modeled results, such improvements reduced burned area by roughly 72% to 92% compared with scenarios without those improvements. Even so, under strong climate change, fire activity still rises in about 55% of Europe’s fire-prone regions when management investment remains at current levels.

Useful measures include:

• managing fuel loads and creating strategically placed fuel breaks;
• using prescribed or controlled burning where it is ecologically and operationally appropriate;
• restoring wetter, more resilient landscapes;
• improving land-use planning around exposed communities and infrastructure;
• strengthening early detection and rapid initial response; and
• coordinating prevention, preparedness, response and recovery rather than relying mainly on emergency suppression.

These measures can reduce exposure and help prevent ignitions from becoming large fires. They have limits, however. Exceptionally dry fuels combined with strong winds can overwhelm suppression efforts, even where aircraft, firefighters and detection systems are available. Fire management reduces consequences; it does not remove the climate conditions that make extreme fires more likely.

What Europe’s 2026 fire season shows

Europe’s 2026 season provides a vivid present-day context for the projections, although it cannot establish that the study’s late-century outcomes have already arrived.

The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre recorded 606,327 hectares burned in the EU by 18 August 2026. That was below the 957,510 hectares recorded by the same date in 2025, but well above the 2006–2025 long-term average of 243,189 hectares.

The season also illustrated the geographic reach of the risk. Fires affected countries including France, Spain and Greece, while a blaze in Belgium’s High Fens burned about 3,000 hectares and was described by Reuters as the country’s largest wildfire on record. By 19 August, eight countries had activated the EU Civil Protection Mechanism for wildfire assistance.

News reports also documented more than 20 deaths and hundreds of thousands of evacuations during the season, including more than 300,000 people displaced in France and Spain. Those figures are time-sensitive and depend on the date and geographic scope of each report, so they should not be compared with the study’s annual burned-area averages as though they were the same kind of measurement.

The connection to the study is therefore directional, not deterministic: the 2026 fires are consistent with a Europe where extreme fire conditions are becoming more consequential and geographically widespread, but a single season cannot validate or attribute projections through 2100.

Why prevention is becoming a financial priority

The EU’s wildfire strategy emphasizes four linked stages—prevention, preparedness, response and recovery—and includes ecosystem-based approaches intended to create more fire-resilient landscapes.

That shift reflects the limits and costs of a response-first model. Research cited by European institutions estimates that each €1 invested in prevention can save roughly €4–€7 in response and recovery costs. This is an estimate across studies, not a guaranteed return for every project, and outcomes depend on where and how money is spent.

The available sources do not establish that €2.1 billion is the precise EU wildfire-management investment associated with this study or strategy. Its meaning would depend on the funding period, whether it includes national spending and which prevention or response programs are counted. A defensible comparison requires that scope to be specified.

The policy lesson

The study supports a two-track response. Europe needs rapid emissions reductions to avoid the much steeper high-emissions trajectory, while also investing now in prevention, landscape resilience, detection and emergency readiness.

Even under a low-emissions pathway, some increase in fire risk remains possible by 2070–2100. That makes adaptation urgent—but it does not make mitigation optional. The strongest strategy is to reduce the climate pressure driving more dangerous fire weather while improving the ability of communities and landscapes to withstand the fires that prevention cannot eliminate.