Summer drought and heat impacts on European harvests
The total downgrade between June and September is now 16.7 million tonnes, equivalent to the entire grain harvest currently forecast for Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands combined.
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This analysis focuses on grain production (wheat, maize, barley, durum wheat and other grains such as triticale). It compares the recent September forecast from the European cereals and oilseeds association COCERAL with their earlier June forecast to quantify the impact that the combination of drought and extreme heat is likely to have had on grain production across the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom (UK).
The damage caused by the June heatwave is pan-European but also unevenly distributed, both across crops and countries.
- France: −5.8m t (≈ €1.47bn) - nearly half the EU+UK total, and nine-tenths of it is maize: the crop is now forecast at 7.6m t, down 45% on 2025 and well below the 9.0m t that Agreste projected in August, which it said could already be the weakest since at least 1980.
- Hungary: −3.2m t (≈ €723m) - the EU's second-largest loss. Maize is down to 1.9m t, half of 2025, with yields of 3.8 t/ha second only to 2022's 3.4 t/ha, which Hungary's statistics office called unprecedented in more than 50 years. Wheat was cut by a further 1.1m t. Hungarian prices, which were falling in July, have since recovered (milling wheat 63,800 Ft/t in late June
- UK: −3.0m t (≈ €527m/£452m) - the biggest change since COCERAL’s July forecast. The UK lost 3.0m t as drought and heat hit crops through July and previous impacts in June were added to the forecast, with wheat yields cut from 7.95 to 6.82 t/ha.
- Germany: −2.5m t (≈ €398m) - concentrated in wheat (−1.7m t); part of that reflects a smaller planted area, which we treat as a statistical update rather than weather damage
- Spain: −1.2m t (≈ €220m) - wheat and barley cut by a further 1.6m t, partly offset by a larger maize crop (+0.7m t)
- Austria: −0.9m t (≈ €215m) - mostly maize, where yields have fallen to 7.2 t/ha from 11.4 t/ha in 2025
- Offsets: crops in Romania, Bulgaria, Sweden, Poland and the Baltics came in better than June feared, worth ≈ €0.7bn
These countries accounted for the majority of the net downward revision in the forecast, reflecting both the impact of the heatwave as well as their status as some of the biggest grain producers in Europe.
Estimate of lost revenue due to net EU-27+UK change in production forecast between June and September 2026 (€m)
