Wildfire Watch UK launches as Britain faces a changing wildfire threat
Wildfires are no longer something Britain can regard primarily as a problem for hotter parts of the world. Record-breaking wildfire activity in 2025 has been followed by another summer of serious concern, with the UK Government issuing an Emergency Alert across England and Wales in August 2026 warning of a “very high risk of wildfires nationally”. As hotter, drier conditions create more periods of dangerous fire weather, Wildfire Watch has launched to bring together information about wildfire activity across the UK.
For decades, the images most of us associated with wildfire came from somewhere else.
California. Australia. Greece. Portugal. Spain.
Huge columns of smoke, aircraft dropping water, orange skies and communities evacuating ahead of fires spreading through landscapes baked dry by weeks of heat.
Britain had moorland fires, grass fires and forest fires, of course. But wildfire rarely occupied the same place in our national consciousness.
That is beginning to change.
On 14 August 2026, the UK Government sent an Emergency Alert to people across England and Wales warning of a “very high risk of wildfires nationally” and that even a small flame could rapidly develop into a major wildfire threatening lives, homes, businesses and emergency responders.
The Government announced additional military support for major incident areas and an immediate ban on disposable barbecues as fire crews dealt with fires around the country.
That warning followed an extraordinary 2025.
By the beginning of September 2025, fire and rescue services in England and Wales had already responded to 996 wildfire incidents, surpassing the previous record set in 2022, according to the Environment Agency’s review of the 2025 drought.
The scale of land affected was remarkable too. The same government review, citing the Global Wildfire Information System, reported that wildfires had burned nearly 460 square kilometres of the UK during 2025.
That’s around 46,000 hectares.
And Scotland experienced what the UK Health Security Agency describes as the country’s first recorded “megafire”, burning more than 10,000 hectares in the Highlands.
These aren’t projections of what wildfire in Britain might look like several decades from now.
They’re happening now.
Wales saw grass fires surge
The figures from Wales are particularly striking.
Welsh Government statistics show that between April and September 2025 there were 7,490 fires in Wales, 55% more than during the same period a year earlier.
But buried within that figure is a much more dramatic change.
There were 2,382 grassland, woodland and crop fires during those six months — more than three times the number recorded during April to September 2024.
Secondary fires, many of which occur outdoors and are particularly influenced by weather conditions, increased by 76%.
Figures published by the Wales Wildfire Board in April 2026 provide another measure of the scale of the change.
Fire services across Wales attended 3,474 grass fire incidents during 2025 — a 275% increase on the previous year and the highest number since 2018.
Of those, 2,357 were deliberate grass fires, an increase of 1,694 incidents, or 256%.
The Welsh Government specifically notes the influence that weather can have on outdoor fires.
And that matters, because the weather conditions which create wildfire risk in Britain are changing.
It doesn’t need to be 40°C
One of the misconceptions surrounding wildfire is that it requires extraordinary heat.
It doesn’t.
Fire needs three basic ingredients: fuel, conditions which allow that fuel to burn, and an ignition source.
Britain has plenty of fuel.
Heather, gorse, bracken, grass, forestry, crops, scrub and peat can all burn. Dead vegetation remaining from the previous growing season can become particularly combustible during a dry spring.
What changes dramatically is the moisture contained within that vegetation.
Weeks of limited rainfall, sunshine, low humidity and wind can turn a landscape which normally appears damp and green into one capable of carrying fire surprisingly quickly.
The Met Office’s assessment of UK climate risk says the number of fire-weather days in the UK has already increased as a result of climate change, with hotter and drier conditions exacerbating wildfire risk.
Its climate modelling indicates that at 2°C of global warming, the number of high fire-weather days in Britain could approximately double, while the wildfire season is expected to extend further into late summer.
Higher temperatures and lower humidity are identified as key drivers.
That doesn’t mean climate change strikes the match.
In Britain, humans usually do.
Most UK wildfires are started by people
Unlike some of the enormous forest fires of Canada and Siberia, where lightning can be a major ignition source, the overwhelming majority of British wildfires are associated with human activity.
Some are deliberate.
Others begin with something mundane: a barbecue, campfire, discarded cigarette, machinery, burning rubbish or a managed vegetation fire which escapes.
The crucial difference is what happens after ignition.
A spark landing in damp vegetation may achieve very little.
Put the same ignition into dry grass or heather after weeks without substantial rain, add low humidity and wind, and the outcome can be completely different.
This is why wildfire risk isn’t simply about the number of ignition sources.
It’s about the changing probability that an ignition develops into a fire capable of spreading.
2025 provided a glimpse of that relationship
The weather preceding Britain’s record-breaking wildfire year was extraordinary.
Spring 2025 was the warmest and sunniest spring in the UK’s observational record.
Its mean temperature reached 9.5°C — 1.4°C above the long-term average — and eight of the UK’s ten warmest springs have now occurred since 2000.
April 2025 was itself the UK’s sunniest April since records began in 1910, recording 47% more sunshine than the long-term average.
By summer, vegetation across large areas had been subjected to prolonged drying.
The result wasn’t that climate change suddenly “caused” hundreds of wildfires.
It created conditions in which fires had far greater opportunity to develop and spread.
The latest accredited fire statistics, published by the UK Government in July 2026, show just how dramatic the increase in outdoor fires became.
In the year ending March 2026, fire and rescue services in England attended 6,924 outdoor primary fires — 48% more than the previous year.
That wasn’t merely a one-year statistical quirk. It was also 33% higher than the equivalent figure ten years earlier.
Secondary fires — generally smaller outdoor fires not involving people or property — reached 102,549, an increase of 30% in a year and 21% compared with ten years earlier.
Overall, English fire and rescue services attended 170,597 fires during the year, up 19%.
Government statisticians specifically identify the hot, dry summer of 2025 as the reason for the large summer spike in outdoor primary and secondary fires, noting similar patterns during the hot, dry summers of 2018 and 2022.
The figures don’t mean that all 6,924 outdoor primary fires or 102,549 secondary fires were wildfires — they weren’t.
But they provide striking evidence of how strongly Britain’s outdoor fire burden can respond when the weather changes.
This is part of a much bigger change
Britain isn’t experiencing wildfire in isolation.
Europe has been confronting the same changing risk on a much larger scale.
The European Forest Fire Information System recorded 1,079,538 hectares burned across the European Union during 2025 — the largest area burned since EFFIS’s comparable records began in 2006.
More than one million hectares in a single year — an area roughly comparable with Cyprus.
During one prolonged heatwave in August alone, 22 very large fires developed almost simultaneously across Portugal and Spain and burned more than 460,000 hectares.
And the traditional idea of a neat Mediterranean “fire season” is becoming increasingly unreliable.
European monitoring shows significant fires occurring earlier in the year, while fires are increasingly affecting areas further north.
The problem is global.
The United Nations Environment Programme has estimated that climate change and land-use change could increase the occurrence of extreme wildfires globally by up to 14% by 2030, 30% by 2050 and 50% by the end of the century.
Even regions historically considered largely immune from serious wildfire are expected to face increasing risk.
A vicious circle
Wildfire is also unusual among climate-related hazards because it can help intensify the very process making extreme fire conditions more likely.
Vegetation and soils store carbon.
When enormous areas burn, some of that carbon is released back into the atmosphere. Forests damaged or destroyed by fire may then absorb less carbon in subsequent years.
Some fires, particularly those involving peat, can release carbon accumulated over very long periods.
Smoke can meanwhile travel hundreds or thousands of kilometres.
Wildfire therefore isn’t simply a problem for the landscape immediately surrounding a fire.
It can affect air quality, human health, water, agriculture, biodiversity, infrastructure and carbon emissions far beyond the flames themselves.
Britain’s wildfire problem is different
None of this means Britain is about to become California or southern Spain.
Our vegetation, climate, topography and patterns of land use are different, and so is the character of our fires.
But Britain’s landscape creates its own vulnerabilities.
Large areas of moorland, heath, forestry and upland vegetation are difficult to access. Peat can continue burning below the surface. Strong winds across exposed hills can drive fires rapidly across dry vegetation.
Remote fires may also be well established before they are reported.
At the other end of the spectrum is the wildland–urban interface — places where homes, roads and businesses meet combustible vegetation.
As periods of favourable fire weather increase, understanding where fires are happening becomes increasingly important for both rural and urban communities.
The information exists — but it is fragmented
Something else has changed dramatically during the past decade: our ability to detect fire.
Satellites orbiting hundreds of kilometres above Earth can identify thermal anomalies associated with active fires.
NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System — FIRMS — makes near-real-time satellite observations available from instruments including VIIRS.
Fire and rescue services publish incident information.
Weather observations tell us about temperature, humidity, wind and rainfall.
News organisations, local authorities and communities provide another layer of information.
Individually, each source tells part of the story.
The difficulty is bringing those pieces together.
That is the problem Wildfire Watch has been built to tackle.
From one fire in North Wales to a UK-wide system
The idea began with a very simple question:
How can I know if there’s a wildfire near my home?
In March, while away from my home in North Wales, I started receiving messages from friends asking whether I was OK.
A fast-moving wildfire was burning nearby and heading towards my home, where I also run an off-grid eco-retreat and glamping business.
I knew nothing about it.
More worryingly, neither did the person who was actually there looking after the property, business and animals.
The fire itself wasn’t invisible.
There was satellite data. There were eventually reports and pieces of information appearing in different places.
What was missing was a straightforward way of putting those signals together around the place I actually cared about.
Wildfire Watch grew from that experience.
The objective is straightforward: bring together satellite fire detections, information from fire and rescue services, weather and other useful sources to create a clearer picture of potential wildfire activity across the UK.
It isn’t intended to replace the emergency services, and a satellite hotspot isn’t automatically a wildfire.
But knowing that something may be burning nearby is the beginning of being able to find out what is happening.
Wildfire in Britain is changing
One exceptional year doesn’t establish a simple upward trend in the number of fires. Wildfire varies enormously from year to year because weather, vegetation, land management and human behaviour all play a role.
That distinction matters.
But the underlying conditions are changing.
The UK’s climate assessment says fire-weather days have already increased as a result of climate change. It remains uncertain whether climate change has yet increased the actual incidence of wildfire in the UK, but climate models project substantially more fire-weather days as temperatures rise.
Recent British fire seasons demonstrate what can happen when prolonged dry weather turns normally resilient vegetation into available fuel.
The latest official figures show outdoor primary fires in England increasing by almost half in a year. Wales recorded a 275% increase in grass fire incidents during 2025. And on 14 August 2026, the UK Government considered the risk sufficiently serious to send an Emergency Alert across England and Wales warning of a “very high risk of wildfires nationally.”
The UK does not need to become the Mediterranean for wildfire to become a much more significant British problem.
It only needs enough days when dry vegetation, suitable weather and an ignition coincide.
Increasingly, those are days worth watching.
Sources and further reading
UK Government / Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government — Fire and rescue incident statistics, year ending March 2026
The latest accredited official statistics for England record 6,924 outdoor primary fires, up 48% year-on-year and 33% over ten years, and 102,549 secondary fires, up 30% year-on-year and 21% over ten years. Government statisticians attribute the large summer spike principally to the hot, dry summer of 2025.
Read the UK Government statistics
UK Government — Emergency Alert, 14 August 2026
The Government sent an Emergency Alert to England and Wales warning of a “very high risk of wildfires nationally” and that even a small flame could rapidly develop into a major wildfire threatening lives, homes, businesses and emergency responders.
UK Government — Government steps up wildfire response with funding, military support and BBQ ban
The accompanying Government announcement details the Emergency Alert, deployment of additional military personnel to major incident areas and other measures taken in response to the August 2026 wildfire situation.
Read the Government announcement
Environment Agency / GOV.UK — 2025 drought: how it developed in England
The Environment Agency’s retrospective reports that by the beginning of September 2025, fire and rescue services in England and Wales had responded to 996 wildfire incidents, surpassing the previous record set in 2022. It also reports Global Wildfire Information System data showing nearly 460 km² of the UK burned by wildfire during 2025.
Read the Environment Agency review
UK Health Security Agency — Why severe wildfires are becoming more frequent in the UK and how to cope with the health risks
UKHSA describes 2025 as a record-breaking year for wildfire in the UK, with nearly 1,000 incidents in England and Wales and Scotland experiencing its first recorded “mega fire”, burning more than 10,000 hectares.
Welsh Government — Fire and rescue incident statistics: April to September 2025
Official statistics record 7,490 fires in Wales, including 2,382 grassland, woodland and crop fires. The latter figure was more than three times that recorded during April to September 2024. Secondary fires increased by 76%.
Read the Welsh Government statistics
Wales Wildfire Board / North Wales Fire and Rescue Service — Be #WildfireWise this spring and summer
Figures published in April 2026 state that Welsh fire services attended 3,474 grass fire incidents in 2025, a 275% increase on the previous year and the highest number since 2018. Of these, 2,357 were deliberate, up 256%.
Read the Wales Wildfire Board figures
Met Office — Double record breaker: Spring 2025 is warmest and sunniest on UK record
Spring 2025 had a mean UK temperature of 9.5°C, 1.4°C above the long-term climatological average, making it the warmest spring since the temperature series began in 1884 and the sunniest since sunshine records began in 1910.
Met Office — UK Climate Risk: State of the Climate
The assessment reports that UK fire-weather days have already increased as a result of climate change, while noting uncertainty over whether climate change has yet increased actual wildfire incidence. Modelling indicates that the number of high fire-weather days could approximately double at 2°C of global warming.
Read the Met Office assessment
European Commission Joint Research Centre / European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) — 2025 was EU’s most destructive wildfire season on record
EFFIS recorded 1,079,538 hectares burned across the EU during 2025, the largest area in its comparable record beginning in 2006. During August, 22 very large fires in Portugal