A woman uses an umbrella to shelter from the sun, surrounded by several other people, in a sun-drenched Trafalgar Square in London
bbc.
The Met Office is expected to confirm that the UK has had its hottest summer since records began in 1884. It follows a spring and summer of persistent heat with five widespread heatwaves and 40 days of temperatures above 30 °C (86 °F), smashing the previous record of 34 days. The temperature figures are in line with evidence that summers are getting hotter, with more intense and frequent heatwaves, as a result of human‑induced climate change. Records are being broken more often – and by bigger margins.
For much of the summer, areas of high pressure dominated the UK weather, with dry conditions and winds from continental Europe allowing temperatures to rise repeatedly. On 11 August the Met Office said it was looking increasingly likely to be the hottest summer since records began. The UK’s mean temperature for the summer up to that point stood at 16.48 °C (61.66 °F), with only average conditions needed during the remainder of August to confirm the seasonal record.
The second half of the month did bring a change in the pattern with cooler, wetter weather for many – but overall temperatures have mostly remained around or above the seasonal norm. Some variations are expected in the final figures for the four UK nations. England and Wales are both expected to set new records, Northern Ireland is likely to come close – but Scotland will fall short.
The highest temperature recorded this summer was 38.1 °C (100.6 °F) at Kew Gardens in London on 13 August. This was, provisionally, the UK’s fifth‑hottest day on record in terms of maximum temperature, but it didn’t meet the all‑time high of 40.3 °C (104.5 °F) measured at Coningsby, Lincolnshire in July 2022. However, it is the persistence of the heat this spring and summer that is remarkable and has broken numerous records.
There have been five widespread heatwaves, including one at the end of meteorological spring which broke the UK’s May temperature record by more than 2 °C. The second in early May broke the May record by more than 2 °C. The third in late June saw Lingwood, Norfolk hit 38.0 °C on 26 June, the hottest June day since 1976. July’s wave lasted three weeks in parts of the South, peaking at 38.1 °C at Kew Gardens on 13 August. The final wave in August produced the highest temperature of the year and pushed the total days above 30 °C to 40.
The intense heat occurred partly because of how dry it was for much of the summer – with some areas seeing no measurable rainfall for more than two months. Drought was declared across all of Wales and in more than two‑thirds of England, and wildfires broke out in the south‑east. However, rain did fall in early June, and the second half of August saw wet weather that caused flash flooding in some towns. Sheffield recorded more rain in the week of 24–30 August than it had in the rest of the season combined. This summer is not expected to break the UK’s overall dryness record set in 2018.
There is something striking about the way the UK’s summer temperature record is being broken. In a climate that isn’t changing, new records should generally become progressively rarer, because every time a record falls, it raises the bar for the next one. Instead, all five of the UK’s hottest summers on record have occurred since 2000. And until last year, the margins between them were tiny: the four hottest were separated by just five hundredths of a degree.
Then came 2025. The record jumped by 0.34 °C. Now, just a year later, it looks like that record has risen even further. Record‑shattering sounds like the kind of language journalists would use. In fact, it is a term climate scientists use for records broken by unusually large margins. Research suggests that such big jumps become more likely if the climate is warming rapidly.
So why is this happening so quickly here? The UK sits on the western edge of Europe, the fastest‑warming continent on Earth – warming at roughly twice the global rate. There are a few reasons for that. Land heats up faster than the oceans. Parts of Europe extend into the rapidly warming Arctic. And changes in weather patterns have favoured more frequent and intense summer heatwaves. Scientists are still working out exactly how much each factor contributes, but the result is clear: the background climate in which British weather happens is getting warmer.
None of this means the UK will break its summer record every year. Weather will always give us cooler summers as well as hotter ones. But the pattern is becoming unmistakable: records that once marked the extreme edge of the UK’s climate are being overtaken with remarkable speed.
The main takeaway is that the UK’s climate is changing. The record‑breaking summer of 2026 shows that heatwaves are becoming more common and more extreme, and that the country must prepare for hotter weather in the years ahead.