From long-term trends to record-breaking heat, recent decades have reshaped what summer in the UK looks like.
As meteorological summer begins, many people may be wondering what the months ahead could bring. Will this be a season of long dry spells, repeated heatwaves or more changeable conditions?
While past records cannot tell us exactly what summer 2026 will bring, it can show us something just as important. UK summers are generally getting warmer, and many of the most notable summers with record-breaking temperatures now belong to recent years.
In the charts below, we explore where the warmest and coolest summers sit in the historical record, how recent standout years compare with well-known summers such as 1976, and what extremes in June, July and August reveal about the way summer heat is now being felt.
The story of UK summer is not just about the occasional standout hot season. It is about a long-term trend in the climate, with warm summers becoming more common and new heat records arriving more often.
Looking across the full UK summer mean temperature record from 1884 to 2025, one of the clearest signals in this shift is how strongly the warmest summers are increasingly clustered in the 21st century, while many of the coolest sit much earlier in the series. The top five warmest summers have all occurred since 2003, and this contrast between the warmest and coolest UK summer mean temperatures shows that summer in the UK today has been on a changing trajectory.
Standout summers: how does 2025 compare with 1976?
Summer 2025 became one to remember as the warmest UK summer on record, with a mean temperature of 16.1°C. It moved ahead of 2018 (15.8°C), 2006 (15.8°C), 2003 (15.7°C) and 2022 (15.7°C), and pushed the famous 1976 out of the top five in the series stretching back to 1884.
What made 2025 especially striking was not a single short spell of heat, but consistently high temperatures across the whole season. It was a summer defined by sustained warmth and means that the five warmest UK summers on record have all occurred since the turn of the century.
However, that does not make 1976 any less memorable in people's eyes. For many, 1976 remains a defining image of a hot UK summer. It brought 16 days where temperatures rose above 32°C, compared with nine such days in 2025, and still holds the record for the highest average summer maximum temperature, while 2025 now holds the record for mean temperature.
Together, 1976 and 2025 show that exceptionally warm summers are not all alike. The summer of 1976 was defined by intense daytime heat and a memorable heatwave, while 2025 was remarkable for sustained warmth over the whole season, including very warm nights, with record-breaking minimum temperatures.
Summer extremes rewriting the record: the UK’s first 40°C day
If one summer captures how far UK heat extremes have shifted, it is the summer of 2022. On 19 July 2022, the UK recorded 40.3°C for the first time, at Coningsby in Lincolnshire. Crossing the 40°C mark was a major moment in UK climate history, not just because a record was broken, but because a threshold once seen as highly unlikely in the UK had been passed.
Here, we explore how daily temperature extremes have changed over time.
During 2022’s record-breaking heat, more than 40 stations on 19 July exceeded the previous UK temperature record of 38.7°C, set during July 2019. The same night saw overnight records, with Shirburn Model Farm in Oxfordshire recording a new highest minimum temperature of 26.8°C. That makes 2022 a powerful example of the potential for extreme heat in the UK.
READ MORE: Record-breaking May 2026 roundup
When taken together, the summer records tell a clear story of change over time. Many of the UK’s warmest summers are now more recent ones. Landmark years such as 1976 are still important, but they are now being viewed in a different context as new records are continuing to be set.
Extremes such as the 40.3°C reached in 2022 show just how far summer heat in the UK can now go. As we head into another summer, the historical record offers a clear reminder that the UK’s climate is changing, and summer is changing with it.
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