The year 2026 goes down in Italy’s climate history with an uncomfortable record. The Institute for Bioeconomics of the National Research Council ( CNR-IBE) has confirmed that the summer that just ended is the hottest ever recorded in our country since 1950. The national average temperature, calculated at two meters above ground level using ERA5 Land data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, reached 24.3 degrees—a figure that, when compared to historical records, serves as a wake-up call.
August, the month that broke all records
August made all the difference. The month’s average temperature, 25.6 degrees, exceeded the 1951–1980 reference climate average by 5.2 degrees and the more recent 1991–2020 average by 3.5 degrees. CNR-IBE researcher Lorenzo Arcidiaco explained that this year’s figure surpasses the previous records of 24.6 degrees in 2024 and 24 degrees in 2017.
This is the third record in nine years, following those set in 2017 and 2024: a trend that makes it increasingly difficult to dismiss this as an isolated anomaly. Arcidiaco also notes that the figures suggest 2026 could end up being the hottest year on record, with both July and August ranking at the very top of the monthly records.
A spring that had already sounded the alarm
Anyone who followed the agrometeorological reports already had cause for concern months before summer. In the spring, the national average temperature had reached 12.1 degrees, a figure identical to that of 2024—the hottest year on record up to that point: a clear sign visible well in advance, yet treated more as a seasonal quirk than as a warning.
Between January and August, approximately 70% of the country experienced temperature anomalies of more than one degree above the reference averages, and 40% exceeded two degrees. According to Arcidiaco, the most affected areas are the plains of the Northwest and the Apennine regions: largely cultivated areas where higher temperatures and drought have hit agriculture particularly hard. Rome, Florence, and Turin, based on GSOD and Ogimet datasets, were repeatedly hit by heat waves between June and August.
The European Context
Much of Europe—the continent warming the fastest in the world—faced a summer marked by droughts and wildfires, and the United Kingdom experienced its hottest summer on record. The data from Italy fits into this continental trend.
When a record is broken for the third time in a decade, the word “exceptional” loses its meaning. Data from the CNR-IBE paint a picture of a country that, season after season, is raising the bar for what it considers normal: farmers revising their crop cycles, cities experiencing more and more tropical nights, and adaptation plans designed for occasional emergencies rather than a structural trend. The question today is no longer whether Italian summers will continue to get hotter, but how quickly infrastructure, crops, and cities will be able to adapt.
