The UK Met Office has announced that the 2026 summer was *provisionally the nation's hottest on record, and El Niño played a significant role in the heat.
We'll break down the role of El Niño in the UK's hot summer in a moment, as well as discussing the underlying contribution of the warming climate. But first, let's examine some key stats from the 2026 UK summer.
In the 2026 United Kingdom summer (June, July and August):
The **average mean temperature was 16.5°C.
This greatly exceeded the previous record of 16.1°C, set in 2025.
The five hottest UK summers have all been this century, with data for the UK as a whole going back to 1884, and some weather stations maintaining records since 1836.
The UK's hottest temperature of the 2026 summer was 38.1°C at Kew Gardens on August 13.
While the UK daily record of 40.3°C (July, 1992, in Coningsby, Lincolnshire) wasn't threatened this summer, a new June record of 38.0°C was set at Lingwood in Norfolk.
Why was it so hot in the UK this summer?
As stated, there were two main reasons behind this summer's unusual UK warmth.
El Niño
As this year's El Niño started to look increasingly likely in May (it was formally declared by several major meteorological agencies including Australia's BoM in June), UK meteorologist Maia Clark wrote a story for Weatherzone on how El Niño typically affects European weather.
Clark qualified her story by stating that the effects of El Niño in Europe are generally less pronounced than in other areas of the world (due partially to the large distance between Europe and the Pacific Ocean).
But she did state that the UK and northern Europe generally experience a drier and warmer season as a result of the jet stream shifting northwards and supressing rainfall to the south of it.
As Sydney-based Weatherzone meteorologist Joel Pippard explains:
"Through a series of atmospheric teleconnections [large-scale links in weather and climate between regions that are thousands of kilometres apart], El Niño creates a regional preference for high pressure to settle over western Europe.
"High pressure over Europe in the summer leads to substantially more frequent and intense heatwaves."
Climate change
Image: It's not Bondi, but some UK residents found relief in the hot 2026 summer at Bournemouth Beach. Source: iStock/PabloMendo.
The UK Met Office was unambiguous about the role of climate change in this summer's heat, stating in the very first line of a statement on September 1 that:
"The season’s mean temperature was made around 130 times more likely due to human-induced climate change."
"These records are now breaking with increasing frequency, reflecting the influence of human-induced climate change on the temperatures we’re experiencing in the UK," Dr Amy Doherty of the Met Office's National Climate Information Centre said.
“Particularly notable is how much we’ve exceeded the previous summer mean temperature record, set just last year."
The UK also had one of its driest and sunniest summers across much of the country, although late season rain prevented records low rainfall records at many locations.
* The term "provisionally" means that meteorologists have not yet fully verified the data from all weather stations that contributed to the summer readings before making the record permanent, but it is usually just a formality to check that there were no faulty instruments. The Australian BoM often undertakes a similar process with significant weather records.
** It's also worth briefly explaining the term "average mean" as the two words are often interchangeable – so why are both used here? In weather, the mean temperature refers to the average of the highest temperature during the day and the lowest temperature at night. The average mean is the average of daily mean temperatures across the whole season.