Germany's summer this year was probably the second-warmest since nationwide weather records began, according to official figures. "According to preliminary calculations, only the ‘summer of the century’ in 2003, with an average temperature of 19.7 degrees, is likely to have been warmer," the German Weather Service (DWD) announced in Offenbach on Monday. With around 22 hot days of at least 30 degrees Celsius and about five very hot days of at least 35 degrees, the frequency of heat was also "unprecedented".
Under the meteorologists' preliminary calculations, the nationwide mean temperature this summer was 19.6 degrees, only marginally below that of the exceptional summer 23 years ago. That was more than 3.3 degrees above the value for the reference period used for long-term comparisons. Heat stress was described as exceptional above all in the south and south-west during the months of June to August. Across the country as a whole, the DWD said, this summer was also "clearly too dry".
Germany and large parts of the rest of Europe were repeatedly hit by extreme heatwaves this summer, some of them long-lasting, and one consequence was a series of heat records. According to the weather service, a new national daily peak was reached on 27 June, when 41.8 degrees was measured in Möckern-Drewitz in Saxony-Anhalt. During the night of 27 to 28 June, a historic night-time record was also set in Kubschütz in Saxony, where the temperature did not fall below 29.4 degrees.
The heat and its effects had serious consequences. Persistent drought pushed the levels of many rivers to record lows, threatening supply chains and triggering fears of an economic downturn. According to calculations by the Robert Koch Institute, an estimated almost 16,000 people died of heat-related causes. Fire services had to tackle numerous forest fires, and farmers are expecting disappointing harvests in places, above all in the south and west of the country, the German Farmers' Association said.
Heat protection and climate policy have accordingly been at the very top of the political agenda in recent weeks, and are the subject of controversial debate. According to experts, human-induced climate change is causing extreme weather events to intensify and occur more frequently. Scientists say Europe is the fastest-warming continent.
"Historic heat, widespread drought and an exceptional amount of sunshine shaped the summer of 2026 in Germany, which will go down in the record books as one of the warmest since nationwide records began," the weather service said on Monday. The assessment was based on an evaluation of results from its roughly 2,000 measuring stations. Systematic weather records have been kept in Germany since 1881.
Nationwide, according to the preliminary assessment, an average of around 171 litres of precipitation per square metre fell, corresponding to just under 72 percent of the target figure from the 1961 to 1990 reference period. After a dry June, "the strikingly low-rainfall July" widened the deficit, while August brought relief only in some regions, the weather service explained.
There were considerable regional variations: on the northern Upper Rhine, for example, only 70 litres fell in places between June and August. Yet the summer also featured localised storms with sometimes substantial rainfall, such as in Deisenhofen in Bavaria, where a record 102 litres per square metre came down within a single day on 29 June. During a later spell of severe weather on 19 August, tornadoes also occurred in several federal states, from Rhineland-Palatinate to Brandenburg.
In terms of sunshine duration, too, this year's summer ranked among the five sunniest since the corresponding measurements began in 1951, according to preliminary calculations. The sun shone for around 779 hours, and in parts of southern Germany locally for about 900 hours.
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