Climate
Why Europe's heatwaves mean mosquito season is now your whole summer
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has scaled up its warning this week: longer, hotter summers of continuously higher temperature create the conditions for mosquito-borne diseases to spread across Europe. The framing is not the single heatwave in the headlines. It is the season getting longer. That changes what a bedroom and a terrace in mainland Europe need to be, starting this summer and going forward. This piece sets out what the ECDC warning actually says, what it implies for West Nile virus, dengue and chikungunya, and the two complementary, chemical-free layers a household in Europe can put in place now: an untreated physical barrier over the bed at night, and an untreated mesh enclosure over the terrace in the evening.
Read →Is my region becoming mosquito country? What receptivity really means
Receptivity means a region has the mosquito, climate and ecology that could support local transmission. It does not mean an outbreak has begun. This explainer separates vector presence from disease risk, shows the four conditions transmission needs, and sets out the practical steps households can control.
Read →Pakistan's Weather Bureau Now Forecasts Dengue Like It Forecasts Rain
Pakistan's Meteorological Department now publishes, in the same bulletin as its temperature and humidity averages, the conditions under which mosquitoes will turn three weeks of warm wet weather into a dengue season. The April 2026 outlook flagged a wetter, warmer monsoon, and 10 cities are watching. Pakistan in 2026 is running a forecast-driven dengue programme, not a reactive one.
Read →22,014 dengue cases in northern Peru that climate change put there
A new One Earth study (Harris et al., 20 March 2026) attributes 22,014 dengue cases in northwestern Peru's 2023 outbreak, roughly 60% of the most-affected districts' cases during a three-month window, to extreme rainfall from Cyclone Yaku, amplified by anthropogenic climate change. The methodology, not the headline number, is the editorial story.
Read →Eight French régions had locally transmitted chikungunya or dengue in 2025. Three of them had never had it before.
Santé publique France's 2025 bilan: 809 locally transmitted chikungunya cases and 30 dengue cases on the French mainland, across 79 and 11 transmission episodes. Three régions, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Grand Est, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, had their first autochthonous episodes. The 2026 surveillance system is the institutional response, and the 2026 data will tell us whether 809 was a peak or a baseline.
Read →A new model puts chikungunya in central Europe, north-eastern North America and East Asia by 2100
A study published 27 May 2026 in *Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology* runs ensemble species-distribution models across 16 CMIP6 climate scenarios, four shared socioeconomic pathways across four global climate models, and projects the climatically suitable zone for chikungunya expanding into north-central Europe, north-eastern North America and East Asia by 2100. The mosquito that carries the virus in temperate climates, *Aedes albopictus*, the Asian tiger mosquito, is already established across 83 of France's 96 départements. The researchers' advice is to prepare before 2040, not at the end of the century.
Read →Europe and North America lead the global map of where dengue mosquitoes spread next
When you picture the places mosquitoes are taking over, you probably picture the tropics. A new model of 29 Aedes species, built from 878,954 occurrence records, says the map is upside down: the regions set to gain the most newly suitable habitat this century are temperate, with Europe and North America at the centre. Across four climate scenarios, more than 70% of the world's land becomes friendlier to these mosquitoes. The tropics are already warm enough; the frontier is at the cooler edges that are only now crossing the threshold. Suitability is not destiny, but the direction is clear.
Read →Paris, Vienna and Zagreb are now warm enough for the tiger mosquito
The Asian tiger mosquito travels in the footwell of a car, a stack of used tyres, the saucer under a balcony pot. According to two studies published in the past year, the climate of five European capitals, Paris, Vienna, Frankfurt, London and Zagreb, has now warmed enough to let it stay. That is the quiet headline of the 2026 season: not an outbreak, a threshold crossed. Europe recorded its largest season of locally acquired chikungunya in 2025, and then eliminated the clusters. Both halves of that sentence are true at once, and the leverage sits with surveillance and standing water.
Read →Mosquito Forecast: What to Expect Summer 2026 in Europe
Conditions across Europe are favourable for mosquitoes in summer 2026. Aedes albopictus is established in 369 regions across 16 countries, the 2025 chikungunya outbreak showed that local transmission can reach scale, and the 2024 dengue record reset expectations. This is the region-by-region outlook, from the Mediterranean core to the northern watch zone, with a practical preparation checklist for residents and travellers.
Read →Five billion people now live in dengue-mosquito country, 26 years ahead of forecast
A new Robert Koch Institute model rebuilds fifty years of monthly global habitat for Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus and finds that suitable territory now overlaps regions home to more than five billion people, a threshold earlier work did not expect the world to cross until 2050. We read the preprint plainly: the figure measures climatic possibility, not people under active threat, but the speed of the expansion is the story. The defences have not changed, source reduction and a physical barrier still work exactly as they did when the map was smaller.
Read →Tiger mosquito establishment to outbreak in Europe: the interval falls below five years
A time-to-event analysis in The Lancet Regional Health, Europe finds the median delay from Aedes albopictus establishment to first locally transmitted dengue or chikungunya outbreak has fallen from 25 years to under five. The interval between successive outbreaks has fallen from 12 years to under one. The study covers European invasions from 1990 to 2024. European surveillance design assumed much longer intervals, and several national programmes have already adjusted.
Read →Europe's dengue risk is up 297%. Public attention is going the other way.
The 2026 Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change Europe reports that the continent's average climatic suitability for dengue outbreaks rose 297% in 2015-2024 versus the 1981-2010 baseline. Combined arboviral risk has roughly quadrupled. Yet of 4,477 speeches given in the European Parliament in 2024, only 21 addressed climate and human health. Here is what the report says, and what households in newly tiger-mosquito territory can do this season.
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