Europe's summer heat has been linked to 32,000 excess deaths. More than 600 were in Portugal
Provisional estimates from the EuroMOMO monitoring network put excess deaths above 32,000 between mid-July and mid-August. Germany alone accounts for 14,000, and the summer is not over.
The books on the European summer are starting to close, and the reading is grim. Between mid-July and mid-August, the EuroMOMO monitoring platform estimates more than 32,000 deaths above the expected level across the 23 countries that feed it data. Portugal’s share, according to figures from the DGS health authority, is more than 600 excess deaths between mid-June and the end of July.
These are provisional numbers and they will move over the coming weeks. EuroMOMO does not break its estimate down by country. It measures the gap between recorded deaths and the level expected for that week of the year, and that gap is what the totals describe.
The two weeks that did the damage
The last week of June was the deadliest of the summer, with close to 16,000 excess deaths across the network. The first week of July follows, at roughly 8,000. Both coincided with heatwaves, and the same dry air that delivered them left the ground ready to burn — which is how much of July went, with half the European Union in drought.
Country by country
Germany recorded 14,000 heat-linked deaths up to 9 August, the highest since the Robert Koch Institute began counting in 2016. France logged 7,300 excess deaths between late May and 22 July, and that will rise, because the heatwave that started at the end of July is not yet in the ledger. Spain counted around 4,500 deaths attributed to heat between 1 June and 19 August.
Then come the smaller countries, where the proportion matters more than the total: 2,877 in England, 2,570 in Belgium in a single month, 968 in the Netherlands across two weeks, 396 in Austria in June. Almost everywhere, the people who died were over 75.
Why Portugal’s number looks small
Partly because the window measured is shorter, and partly because this summer’s peaks hit central and northern Europe harder than the Iberian peninsula. That is not a reason for comfort. Six hundred deaths above the expected level in six weeks is a heatwave with a bill of its own, and the Portuguese summer sent the rest of its invoice elsewhere — to the fires, where the country saw more blazes but less burnt land than in 2025.
The final count will not be known until autumn, once late registrations arrive and each national authority closes its own reporting period. What exists now is an order of magnitude, and that much is settled.
Chart: Tugadaily, with data from national health authorities
