France records around 1,000 additional deaths amid extreme heat wave leading to European records

France saw around 1,000 additional deaths last week at the height of its record-smashing heat wave, the country’s public health agency said on Sunday (June 28, 2026), as Europeans elsewhere were suffering through yet another day of new temperature highs that sparked wildfires in Germany and had Berlin police using water cannons to cool down the crowds.

Temperature records were toppled in several countries on the weekend as the heat wave slowly moved toward eastern parts of the continent.

In Germany, a new nighttime temperature record was reported on Sunday (June 28, 2026) from Kubschütz, in eastern Saxony, where the temperature did not drop below 29.4 degrees Celsius (84.9 Fahrenheit). The nightly record came only hours after a daytime record of 41.5 C (106.7 F) in Möckern-Drewitz in Saxony-Anhalt, according to preliminary data by the German Weather Service DWD. The previous record was set a day earlier.