State of Wildfires 2025–2026

11 November 2026

The third State of Wildfires report examines extreme wildfire events from 2025 to early 2026. It analyses key regional events in Midwestern Canadian Shield Forests, Northwest Iberia, and Chilean Temperate Forests and Matorral, assessing their impacts, drivers, and attributing them to climate change. Climate change greatly increased the likelihood of these fires, and without strong mitigation, such events will become more frequent.

Chantelle A. Burton, Francesca Di Giuseppe, Matthew W. Jones, Douglas I. Kelley, Maria L. F. Barbosa, Joe McNorton, Bob Potts, Carlota Segura-Garcia, John T. Abatzoglou, Iulian Alin Rosu, Niels Andela, Liana O. Anderson, Sally Archibald, Esther Brambleby, Emilio Chuvieco, Andrew Ciavarella, Hamish Clarke, Francisco de la Barrera, Carlos M. Di Bella, Enza Di Tomaso, Kebonye Dintwe, Tim S. Doherty, Victoria M. Donovan, Jonathan M. Eden, Paulo M. Fernandes, Lukas Fiedler, Louis Giglio, Olivia Haas, Douglas S. Hamilton, Stijn Hantson, Sarah Harris, Andrew J. Hartley, Theo Keeping, Crystal A. Kolden, Jean-Luc Kouassi, Elena Kukavskaya, Seppe Lampe, Zhongwei Liu, Guilherme Mataveli, Sarah Meier, Duarte Oom, Mark Parrington, Yuquan Qu, Victor Resco de Dios, Julien Ruffault, Mojtaba Sadegh, Cristina Santín, Fernando Sedano, Jacquelyn K. Shuman, Patrícia S. Silva, Fiona R. Spuler, Carmen B. Steinmann, Veerachai Tanpipat, Miguel Ángel Torres-Vazquez, Marco Turco, Guido R. van der Werf, Dave van Wees, Sander Veraverbeke, Jakob B. Wessel, and Bo Zheng

Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 18, 8037–8105, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-18-8037-2026, 2026

Contact: Chantelle A. Burton (chantelle.burton@metoffice.gov.uk), Francesca Di Giuseppe (francesca.digiuseppe@ecmwf.int), Matthew W. Jones (matthew.w.jones@uea.ac.uk), and Douglas I. Kelley (doukel@ceh.ac.uk)