“This heat is not possible”: nearly 41 million people continue to experience crushing temperatures during the day and hot nights, a prolonged heatwave which plunges 60 departments of the country into orange vigilance on Saturday, according to a weather report published at midday by Météo France. Overwhelming heat which threatens the very popular Music Festival on Sunday.
This second episode in a few weeks turns out to be “extensive, lasting and intense”, warns Météo France. On Sunday, the mercury could reach 41°C “in places” and the red alert level, the highest, could be triggered.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu was due to activate the interministerial heatwave crisis unit late Saturday morning. Météo France expects temperatures to reach “often 35 to 38°C, locally 39°C, in the departments in orange, a little less however from Pays de la Loire to Île-de-France with 33 to 35°C”. The institute also warns of a “marked stormy deterioration at the end of the afternoon and evening from eastern Burgundy/Grand Est to Aisne and Seine-et-Marne”, with 10 departments placed on orange thunderstorm alert.
On Friday, storms particularly affected Hauts-de-France. Two men, “slightly injured”, were transported to Arras hospital after lightning struck the metal porch of a restaurant in front of which they were, according to firefighters.
This prolonged heatwave, linked to climate change and which began on Thursday, is shaking up the country, forcing, among other things, schools or construction sites to adapt, or even close.
A construction site in Paris on June 19, 2026
JOEL SAGET / AFP
It could be of “a duration and severity identical to that of August 2003”, according to Météo France, and continue for a large part of next week.
Parks open at night
“I live in a house and my bedroom is under the roof, so it’s really terribly hot at the moment,” says Antoine, a 66-year-old retiree in Schiltigheim, near Strasbourg.
Air conditioning “can be used in particular in cases where we need to protect, I am thinking in particular of maternity wards,” said former environmentalist minister Cécile Duflot, interviewed on France Inter on Saturday. “The more we use air conditioners, the more we heat up around the place where we air condition,” however warned the general director of Oxfam France.
Installation of an air conditioner in a house in Méricourt, Pas-de-Calais, June 19, 2026
François LO PRESTI / AFP
To cope with this new early heat wave, Paris has decided to open its parks and gardens night and day. The prefect of police, Patrice Faure, requested the cancellation of the 11 outdoor sporting events planned in the capital this weekend and the mayor Emmanuel Grégoire expressed his serious concern about the progress of the Music Festival. “There have been debates but for the moment we prefer to maintain the Music Festival in order to be able to order it and supervise it rather than endure it,” the socialist councilor declared to the daily Le Monde on Saturday.
The Minister of Culture Catherine Pgard called, for her part, on France 2, for “extreme vigilance” in the face of the heat wave, while leaving the decision to maintain or cancel the Music Festival festivities to the prefectures and municipalities.
Ozone pollution
The hottest days in France
Sylvie HUSSON, Sabrina BLANCHARD / AFP
The current lead is accompanied by a deterioration in air quality, with episodes of critical ozone pollution, particularly in Île-de-France.
Europe is also seeing red. A new heatwave is set to begin in the UK this weekend before a peak is expected on Monday and Tuesday, according to the Met office weather agency. In Spain, authorities have issued an alert for an extreme heat wave expected to affect most of the country as well as the Balearic Islands from Sunday.
According to scientific consensus, climate change induced by human activity is making extreme weather phenomena, including heat waves, more intense. “Those who die from climate change are more often the poorest and even more often women,” declared Cécile Duflot, calling for “act now”.
Heat killed some 5,700 people in France in 2025 after 3,700 the previous year, according to estimates from the French Public Health agency. Three quarters of deaths concern people over 75.
