The summer of 2026 was the hottest on record in the United Kingdom since 1884, according to provisional data from the British meteorological service Met Office.
The average temperature during the months of June, July and August was 16.5°C, with a maximum of 38.1°C recorded in eastern London on 13 August.
Nevertheless, the temperature remained below the British August record of 38.5°C, set in 2003, and the historical maximum of 40.3°C recorded on 19 July 2022.
The Met Office indicated that this was also one of the sunniest summers on record (since 1910) and a very dry season for many locations across the country.
“These records are now being broken with increasing frequency, reflecting the influence of human-induced climate change on the temperatures we are recording in the United Kingdom,” said Amy Doherty, head of the Met Office’s Climate Information Centre, in a statement.
The scientist highlighted the significant rise in the average summer temperature compared with the previous record of 16.1°C set in 2025.
“The numbers also push the infamous summer of 1976 to seventh place in terms of average summer temperature, with the five hottest summers having occurred all since 2003,” she said.
The five warmest summers on record in the United Kingdom are now this year, with an average temperature of 16.5°C, that of 2025 with 16.1°C, that of 2018 with 15.7°C, that of 2006 with 15.7°C and that of 2003 with 15.7°C.
The British summer was characterized by a series of heatwaves, with many days on which temperatures exceeded 30°C.
Scientists at the Met Office estimated that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions have increased the likelihood of such a hot summer by 130 times.
“In a climate not affected by human-emitted greenhouse gases, a summer like this would be exceptionally unlikely, i.e., one in more than a thousand years. In our current climate, which is changing due to the use of fossil fuels, we should now expect this to be an event with a probability of about one in nine years,” warned Mark McCarthy, head of the Met Office’s Climate Attribution Department.
