US EditionWhat Portugal’s Hellish Wildfires Can Tell Us About Forest Futures
Wildfires in 2025 have caused 10 deaths and burned over one million hectares across multiple European Union countries, with Spain accounting for nearly 40% of the total area affected.
- Wildfires scorched more than one million hectares across 22 EU countries by August 21, 2025, marking a record area burned since 2006.
- This record-breaking wildfire expansion occurred under extreme conditions and was monitored using data from EFFIS, a European climate monitoring system that tracks fires affecting areas of 30 hectares or more.
- Spain remains the most affected EU country, with over 400,000 hectares lost and four deaths, while Portugal had nearly 274,000 hectares burned early in the year, a never-before-seen early figure.
- By August 19, these fires emitted 35 megatons of CO2, an amount EFFIS calls unprecedented for the year, while the provisional EU death toll in 2025 reached 10 people.
- Several European Union nations, including Spain, Cyprus, Germany, and Slovakia, have faced their most severe wildfire seasons in the last twenty years of available records.
30 Articles
30 Articles
The wave of fires unleashed in early August, which is particularly virulent in the north-west of the Iberian peninsula, is also breaking European statistics. Data from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), under the European environmental monitoring programme Copernicus, indicated on Friday that the EU as a whole has already exceeded the million hectares affected by the flames. To a large extent it is due to fires in Spain and Por…
Wildfires: Europe is being ravaged by a large number of wildfires this year. Spain and Portugal are particularly hard hit. More than one million…
Wildfires keep raging across Iberian peninsula
Wildfires continue to devastate Portugal and Spain, with nearly 300,000 hectares burned in Portugal and over 400,000 in Spain, marking record seasons for both countries. In Portugal, firefighters have been injured, and several people have died, while in Spain protests erupt over government failures in fire prevention and management. Across the EU, more than 1 million hectares have burned since January, an area larger than Cyprus.
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