Summer 2026 on course to be hottest on record, says Met Office

This summer is on course to be the UK's hottest since records began, according to the Met Office. Only average conditions are needed for the remainder of August to surpass the record set just last year. Provisional Met Office statistics show that the UK's mean temperature for meteorological summer so far (1 June to 10 August) currently stands at 16.48C (61.66F), which is 1.88C above the 1991-2020 average. In summer 2025, the mean temperature across the country - which includes overnight lows as well as daytime highs - was 16.10C (60.98F). It is in line with evidence that summers are getting hotter and are likely to become drier because of climate change. The summer of 2026 has already been extraordinary. A late-spring heatwave that set a new May temperature record was followed by another heatwave in June, and a third in July which lasted for two weeks in places. Further heatspikes have followed, with many places reaching their heatwave thresholds multiple times throughout the summer. We have seen 37 consecutive heatwave days somewhere in the UK this year. The highest temperature of the summer so far was 38C recorded at Lingwood in Norfolk on 26 June. It is possible that this could