England's Record Wildfire Month: What July 2026 Shows
July 2026 brought 624 wildfires in England, the most in any month on record.
The total comes from provisional government data published on 8 October 2026. Provisional means early figures that can still be revised. The same dataset counts 1,354 wildfires from January to August 2026, already the second-highest yearly total on record. The Guardian
That year-to-year comparison covers different time periods. 2022 still holds the full-year record with 1,592 wildfires. The 2026 total covers only January to August. From 2010 to 2017, annual totals stayed under 750, ranging from 310 to 721. In four of the last nine years, annual totals passed 950. 2026 has also set a record for woodland and forest fires, with 88 recorded.
The fire season followed record heat. Summer 2026 was the UK's hottest on record in provisional Met Office data. The Met Office is the UK's national weather service. Temperatures above 30C were recorded on 40 days, above the previous record of 34 days. In 2022, the UK recorded 40C for the first and only time. Long heat dries out grass and woodland like fuel waiting for a spark.
For the first time in the 2010-2026 data series, a wildfire death has been recorded. A 70-year-old man died after a wildfire burned in fields behind Berrington Road and Castle Gardens in Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire.
The July fires included a fire that burned close to the Sizewell B nuclear power station in Suffolk, destroying large areas of a protected nature reserve. A wildfire in eastern England in late July forced evacuations of nearby communities and prompted road closures. At the time, officials assessed it as posing no threat to the nearby Sizewell nuclear sites and said it was not expected to spread to them. Reuters
On the Suffolk coast, the incident centred on Dunwich Heath. Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service reported a large wildfire starting at 5:00pm on 29 July 2026, with fire stations from Leiston, Reydon and Southwold, and Halesworth in attendance. A large cloud of smoke was visible on 30 July. Suffolk Council later described it as Suffolk's largest wildfire response, with crews still on scene on 5 August, one week after it began.
A separate August wildfire spread across an area including several homes in Stourbridge in the West Midlands. Prime Minister Andy Burnham convened an emergency Cobra meeting after that fire. Cobra is the government's emergency committee for serious events. He then issued a temporary ban on the sale of disposable barbecues in August 2026.
The broader context here is a shift in the baseline, not a single unusual summer. Records are crowding into a short window. Woodland and forest fires reached a new high. A first fatality appeared in a 16-year series. The figures are provisional and will be revised, and the August cut-off leaves the full peak-season comparison with 2022 open. What will matter next is whether the Cobra-level response and retail restriction stay as one-off measures for summer 2026, or become part of a standing approach when nearly half of recent years produce more than 950 incidents.
