With France experiencing its driest year ever, a new fire raced through woodlands overnight in the Landes region on the southwest coast.
The blaze forced more than 500 people to evacuate their homes in the town of Luglon as hundreds of firefighters deployed to the area, the regional administration said on Friday.
It's one of several fires scorching forests around France this week, including in usually cooler and wetter regions in the north and Brittany.
A historic fire devoured forests near Bordeaux in July and pushed a quarter of a million people from their homes.
Efforts to contain a wildfire in Germany were complicated by unexploded World War II munitions, and shifting winds in Croatia spread flames deeper into a coastal suburb and forced more than 1000 people to flee.
After the UK recorded its hottest day of 2026 on Thursday, wildfires raced across the West Midlands and burned several houses to the ground.
They had been "one of the most significant" incidents the region's fire service had ever dealt with, chief fire officer Simon Tuhill said.
Some 1017 wildfires have been recorded in England and Wales in 2026, according to the National Fire Chiefs Council.
The fires came on the hottest day of the year, when temperatures reached 38.1C in west London.
In France, temperatures on Thursday approached 41C in several areas, from Aquitaine in the southwest to the Rhone River valley in the east, according to the national weather service.
They were forecast to reach similar levels on Friday before dropping at the weekend.
The historic temperatures are linked to human-caused climate change, and are hitting countries more designed for long cold seasons and ill-equipped for this sort of heat, with limited air-conditioning.
All 1800 residents of the village of Gey in Germany's North Rhine-Westphalia state were evacuated after a wildfire in the nearby Hurtgen forest threatened to reach their homes.
Almost 300 hectares of forest were ablaze on Friday morning.
Unexploded ordnance from World War II in the forest hampered firefighting efforts, German news agency DPA reported.
Hundreds of personnel were deployed to battle the fire, with the German army sending tanks and firefighting helicopters providing air support.
In Croatia, 14 people were hospitalised, of whom seven remained in life-threatening condition on Friday from a fire that raged overnight by the coastal town of Omis and forced more than 1000 people to leave their homes.
The fire erupted late on Thursday in an Omis suburb and quickly spread because of strong wind.
Firefighters put out the blaze by Friday morning as other crews headed further south towards the Peljesac peninsula where another wildfire broke out overnight.
In northern Greece, more than 300 holidaymakers and residents were evacuated by sea on Thursday after a wildfire swept through a pine forest and threatened seaside homes.
