Europe experienced its deadliest summer on record in 2026, with elevated temperatures claiming more than 50,000 lives in towns and cities across the continent, according to a landmark study.

Researchers estimated that two-thirds of these excess deaths – exceeding 32,000 – can be directly linked to climate change intensifying the extreme heat .

In the UK, urban areas recorded around 4,500 excess deaths, with 2,500 of those attributed to the heightened severity of heatwaves driven by global warming, according to the paper published in Nature Health.

The summer of 2026 brought a sequence of severe heatwaves, particularly across western Europe, where seasonal temperatures were 2.9C higher than the 1991-2020 average and surged by up to 12C above normal on peak days.

Academics from Imperial College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine modelled mortality across 854 urban centres representing approximately 40 per cent of the population in the EU, UK, Norway and Switzerland.

Their…