France, UK shatter heat records as Europe swelters under dome
France logged its hottest day ever at 29.8 C, while Britain set a new June record and Spain’s heat toll rose to 212 deaths.
On Tuesday, June 23, 2026, France's national thermal indicator reached 29.8 C as a blistering dome of trapped hot air pushed Western Europe into a stretch of dangerous day-and-night temperatures, shutting schools, interrupting trains and straining power networks as records fell across the region.
That measure, based on temperatures at 30 weather stations, topped the previous all-day record of 29.4 C set on July 25, 2019 and tied on August 5, 2003. Météo-France placed 54 departments, about half the country, under a red heatwave alert, while Paris hit a June record of 40.9 C. In Pissos, in southwestern France, temperatures climbed to 44.3 C.
A heat-related outage left around 68,000 homes without electricity in western France’s Finistère region, and schools, trains, sporting events and work routines were disrupted. French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu will activate the highest level of public health mobilization to increase staffing. French officials warned of drowning risks after 40 to 48 drowning deaths in France since the weekend.
Britain also set records. The Met Office issued red extreme heat warnings for parts of England and Wales. Gosport, Hampshire, reached 36.1 C, the highest June temperature ever recorded in the UK, surpassing the previous June mark from 1976. The Met Office recorded a provisional new English June minimum-temperature record of 23.0 C in Plymouth, while Cardiff’s Bute Park reached a June minimum of 23.5 C.
Spain’s MoMo monitoring system estimated the heatwave was linked to 212 deaths between Sunday and Wednesday. Extreme temperatures could last through the end of the week and beyond, across a region where air conditioning is less widespread and many homes, schools and transit systems were not built for prolonged heat.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
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