It is not your imagination: June 2026 was the warmest June on record for England, and the second-warmest for the United Kingdom as a whole, according to provisional data released by the Met Office on July 1.
England’s mean temperature for the month was 17.1°C, nearly 3°C above the long-term June average, and enough to surpass any previous June in records stretching back to 1884.
The numbers
The statistic that stands out is not just the monthly mean, but the extremes that drove it. On Friday, June 26, the mercury reached 37.7°C (99.9°F) at Lingwood, Norfolk, the highest June temperature ever recorded anywhere in the UK, breaking the previous record of 35.6°C set in 1957 and equalled during the famous 1976 heatwave.
The eastern and southeastern regions were hit hardest. East Anglia recorded the warmest regional June mean at 18.3°C, a staggering 3.2°C above the regional average. The southeast and central southern England mean was 18.1°C (+2.9°C). These are not marginal records; they are departures that climate scientists describe as “exceptional.”
Wales recorded its second-warmest June on record and its hottest June day ever at 35.9°C in Cardiff, beating the previous Welsh June record of 33.7°C. Northern Ireland equalled its June record at 30.8°C. A red extreme heat warning, the highest alert level, was issued for parts of England and Wales, and eastern England experienced an unprecedented three-day run of such warnings.
What drove the heat
The month was characterized by an intense heatwave in its final week, following an already warm early and mid-June. The number of “tropical nights”, where nighttime temperatures do not fall below 20°C, was unusually high across southern and eastern England, pushing the monthly mean upward by preventing overnight cooling.
The Met Office’s Emily Carlisle noted that June’s exceptional warmth fits a broader pattern: every month in 2026 across the UK has been above average except January.
The climate change context
The record is not merely a weather headline. The World Weather Attribution group concluded that climate change was “unequivocally” responsible for the intensity of the June heatwave, and that such June temperatures would have been “virtually impossible” 50 years ago.
BBC Weather’s analysis explicitly connects the dots: heatwaves are becoming more frequent and more extreme due to climate heating. Of 12 June heatwaves in Spain since 1975, half have occurred in the last decade.
The human toll is also becoming visible. Excess mortality estimates for France’s concurrent heatwave exceed 1,000 deaths among those aged 65 and older; Spain has reported 1,029 excess deaths. While lower than the catastrophic August 2003 heatwave (30,000–70,000 deaths across Europe), these numbers reflect the compounding risk as baseline temperatures rise.
What the record means
Single-month records are not trends, but they are signals. England’s warmest June arrives in a year that has already seen record June heatwaves across continental Europe, with France recording 44.3°C, and a pattern of northward-shifted jet stream conditions that climate models have long projected as a consequence of Arctic amplification.
The Met Office’s HadUK-Grid data set (1 km resolution, records back to 1836) provides the observational infrastructure to track these changes with confidence. The provisional data for June 2026 will be confirmed in the coming months, but the signal is unlikely to change.
For the UK, a country not historically known for extreme summer heat, the question is no longer whether records will fall, but how frequently, and how far above the old marks, the new ones will land.
Sources
Met Office, “June 2026 weather stats: A regional breakdown” (1 July 2026).
Fawkes, C. “England had its warmest June on record.” BBC Weather (1 July 2026). https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/articles/cjdg98g8lg8o