Europe is struggling to cope as extreme heatwaves become more frequent, bringing with them a devastating but often overlooked health crisis: excess deaths caused by soaring temperatures.
In Luxembourg, the impact is clear: Over the five weeks from 15 June to 19 July, 91 additional deaths were recorded, mostly among the elderly, according to the latest figures from the Ministry of Health. Those aged over 85 were particularly vulnerable, accounting for 55 excess deaths during this time.
During the week of 22–28 June, when many countries were experiencing the peak of the heatwave, national statistics institutes in Germany, France, Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Luxembourg registered around 10,000 excess deaths.
While these figures are not final, provisional data from the European Mortality Monitoring project (EuroMOMO), which compiles official statistics from 24 countries representing around 400 million people, confirms a sharp rise: during the last week of June alone, 14,260 excess deaths were recorded across participating countries. In Luxembourg, there were 26 excess deaths that week.
Looking back over the past seven years, only one other summer week – July 2022 – has seen a higher death toll than week 26 of 2026. Notably, Covid-19 was still circulating in some countries during the July 2022 spike.
According to Lasse Vestergaard, an epidemiologist at Denmark's Statens Serum Institut and EuroMOMO coordinator, there is no other cause for this excess mortality than the heat, which he sees as "quite dramatic". Moreover, Hans Henri Kluge, the World Health Organisation's Regional Director for Europe, warned on Thursday that the summer is not over yet.
Germany has been especially affected by the heatwaves, with nearly 12,000 heat-related deaths, according to figures released Thursday by the Robert Koch Institute.
Belgium also saw an unprecedented rise in deaths during June's heatwave, according to a preliminary report published by the federal government on Friday, which states that Belgium recorded 39% excess mortality (+1,222 deaths) between Thursday, 18 June and Monday, 29 June.
The French national health agency reported 5,764 excess deaths between 17 June and 2 July, the highest summer mortality since 2003. The majority were among the elderly, but unusually, some younger people were also among the victims.
Beyond the alarming statistics, experts say that the very structure of society is being put to the test. Emergency services, already stretched thin, are pushed to near breaking point each time a major heatwave hits.
Both the World Health Organisation and the Copernicus climate programme warn that, unless radical changes are made to urban planning, including extensive greening of cities, the human toll will continue to escalate exponentially.
