During the summer of 2026, a doomsday scenario became the reality across Europe: France had the hottest June and July ever recorded, with temperatures exceeding 40°C in more than 40% of the country. France, Spain, parts of Germany and the United Kingdom all reported exceptionally low rainfall and soil moisture. And wildfires in Southern Europe led to the evacuation of more than 300,000 people.
Given this kind of wildfire risk in Europe, what do future years hold? Each consecutive year already presents wildfire emergencies with serious risks emerging in Central and Northern Europe as well.
Insurance companies operating in these regions may up until now have been forgiven for not having wildfire risk at the forefront of their thinking. However, following the prominent recent example of the largest wildfire in German history in the Eifel region, alarm bells should be ringing. The acute and emerging risk of wildfires has direct implications for insurers and governmental agencies. Understanding where wildfire exposure is highest, and how to then mitigate this risk, will become a central concern for the health of communities, governments and businesses.
This report presents an innovative method to gain insight into wildfire risk in two European regions: “DACH,” an acronym used to describe the area of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and “Benelux,” the area of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The report suggests that today's climate and current wildfire risk are analogous with the climate and possible wildfire risk in the future. This framework is designed to also be applied equivalently in other regions and for other perils where limited availability of historical data is the biggest problem in doing a risk assessment.
The paper covers the following key topics.
- Wildfire risk in detail: Risk characteristics and perceived at-risk locations in DACH and Benelux
- Approximating wildfire risk via climate analogies and forward projection: General framework and application in this paper
- Results: Current and 2080 risk projections for German, Switzerland and the Netherlands