UK Heatwave Risk: Summer 2026 Forecast Warns of Extreme Temperatures
The Met Office’s seasonal outlook for summer 2026 has raised the probability of extreme heat events above the long-run climatological average, continuing the pattern of seasonal forecasting that has regularly signalled elevated summer heat risk in recent years as the background warming trend associated with climate change systematically shifts the distribution of summer temperatures in the United Kingdom towards higher extremes.
The UK’s experience of summer heatwaves has transformed markedly since 2018, which produced the first widespread acknowledgement among the British public that extreme summer heat was no longer a foreign phenomenon. The summer of 2022, when temperatures exceeded 40 degrees Celsius for the first time on record, produced excess deaths in the thousands and exposed the vulnerability of the UK’s building stock — designed for a cooler climate — to sustained high temperatures. Subsequent summers have not reached those extremes but have regularly produced periods of heat that public health bodies classify as hazardous for vulnerable groups.
Public health authorities in England, Wales and Scotland have developed Heat Action Plans that specify the coordinating actions to be taken when temperature thresholds are reached, including communications advice to vulnerable people, increased capacity at health and social care services and guidance for employers on managing worker safety in hot conditions. The plans have matured considerably since their initial development and now represent a more comprehensive response framework than existed when the first serious UK heat emergencies occurred.
The built environment challenge — how to make UK homes, offices and public buildings comfortable during extreme heat without dramatically increasing the energy demand for cooling — remains a major unresolved policy question. The government’s building standards do not yet require new homes to be designed for future climate conditions, creating a risk of locking in heat vulnerability across the housing stock for decades.
