Fuelled by climate change and a shift in land-use practices, wildfires are increasing in number and intensity across Europe. In fact, last year was the worst year for wildfires in Europe in 20 years, according to an EUMETSAT report. Its authors contribute the intensity of the fires to factors like increasingly dry vegetation, low soil moisture and strong winds. There is a need for more and better sustainable and preventive solutions; the topic of the upcoming workshop on 12 May 2026 in the European Parliament, hosted by the Panel for the Future of Science and Technology (STOA).
The European Forest Fires Information System (EFFIS) noted that last year, wildfires burnt an unprecedented 1 079 538 hectares in EU 27 countries and 1 092 095 hectares in other European countries, the largest area recorded since the EFFIS data collection started. The most affected countries were Portugal, Spain, southern France, southern Italy, Greece, Türkiye, Ukraine, and even parts of the UK.
To boost the resilience of forests to wildfires and help improve fire prevention and management, European policy frameworks and EU funding instruments increasingly support the transition toward preventive ‘nature-based solutions’ such as ecosystem restoration and diversified landscape management. Such solutions will also be highlighted at the upcoming STOA workshop on 12 May 2026.
Combination of two trends
Currently, experts agree, a combination of two trends is driving the occurrence of more extensive and dangerous wildfires. “The first one is the changes in the territory”, says Prof. Juan Picos, one of the speakers of the STOA workshop and one of the coordinators of the FIREPOCTEP+ project that aims to strengthen forest fire prevention and suppression in the region between Spain and Portugal.
“At the beginning of the 20th century,” he explains, “many parts of Europe had a more deforested landscape. Most of the land was shaped not only by agriculture, but also by grazing management, with large herds of goats, sheep and cows roaming around.”
Prof. Juan Picos, University of Vigo (Spain) and co-coordinator of the EU-funded FIREPOCTEP+ project: “The urbanisation process in the last decades of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century enabled the regrowth of vegetation in the majority of these areas. Most of the agricultural grazing activities have stopped, so now the vegetation covers a much larger part of the landscape than in previous centuries. There is a lot of biomass that can feed the wildfires.” – Read the full interview with Juan Picos
More severe wildfires
On top of that, climate change is facilitating conditions for very intense burning. “Because of climate change, we can now have up to nine months of wet season even in these western Atlantic regions, which means that vegetation can grow easily and very fast. And then we have a very dry summer, and the dry period is getting longer. After that, any source of ignition finds a landscape that is very prone to burn”, explains Picos.
The analysis shows that the northwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula, one of the hotspots of wildfires in Europe, had fewer, but much more severe wildfire events. “In Galicia, until recently, we never had a wildfire that spread over more than 10,000 hectares. Last year, we had five wildfires that each reached between 10,000 and 30,000 hectares”, says Picos.
One of the hypotheses, he explains, is that the absence of smaller wildfires is probably facilitating the conditions for the big ones. “This is why it matters how we manage a territory and how we can make it more resilient”, says Picos.
Tests of nature-based solutions
During the FIREPOCTEP+ project, which has 15 beneficiaries from Spain and Portugal, scientists tested nature-based preventive solutions such as low-intensity burning of vegetation, thinning of the forest area, and introduction of abandoned cultivation that are less prone to fuel wildfires. The goal was to find strategic places where specific preventive activity improves resilience, generating economic gain in the process.
According to Picos, “the traditional approach to a wildfire problem assumes that we need ‘more people, planes and better technology’ to suppress the fires. But once the wildfire starts, most of the time we don’t have enough capacity to suppress it. So, there is a need for another approach, in which we build more ‘resilient territories and landscapes’ that can prevent wildfires from becoming extreme.”
Multiple solutions and technologies
Dr Ragni Fjellgaard Mikalsen, another speaker at the STOA event and senior research scientist at RISE Fire Research in Norway, believes that we need to have both strategies to deal with wildfires.
“Nature-based solutions have many benefits, but different approaches complement each other. We’re seeing that wildfires in Europe are becoming more frequent and more intense. We need to have more different types of solutions”, says Fjellgaard Mikalsen.
She was one of the leaders of the large-scale EU Green Deal project TREEADS, which brought together a consortium of 48 partners from 13 European countries with the aim of developing various innovative technologies and systems for reducing damage caused by wildfires while maximising the benefits of restoration. The project resulted in ‘26 different solutions and technologies’ for integrated fire management and adaptive forest restoration that are already applied in some EU countries.
The project’s scientists have been focused on all phases of wildfires, developing solutions for prevention, preparedness and response, and those that can be applied in the aftermath of a wildfire. Among other things, the project explored different uses of drones and created innovative seed balls that can be dropped from the air to speed up reforestation.
Dr Ragni Fjellgaard Mikalsen, Senior Research Scientist at RISE Fire Research in Trondheim (Norway): “We have an opportunity to use technologies that are currently applied in other sectors, and adjust them to be helpful for wildfire management. Because of climate change, it’s obvious that this will be a massive problem for our society in the years to come. And we need awareness, funding, new technologies and new management strategies. We need collaborations between different regions and different countries. Wildfire is not just an issue for the fire services; it is a societal issue.” – Read the full interview with Ragni Fjellgaard Mikalsen
Useful links:
• 12 May 2026 at 15:00h CEST: STOA workshop ‘Nature-based solutions against forest wildfires’ in the European Parliament and web-streamed
• ‘Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions on integrated wildfire risk management’, 25 March 2026
Related content:
• A scientist’s opinion: interview with Prof. Juan Picos about solutions against wildfires
• A scientist’s opinion: interview with Dr Ragni Fjellgaard Mikalsen about solutions against wildfires