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Belgium recorded around 2,000 more deaths than expected during the June and early July heat wave, Belga News Agency reported Friday, after the country's public health institute, Sciensano, revised an earlier estimate upward.
Sciensano said the updated figure represented excess mortality of 48%, compared with the 1,747 excess deaths it had reported a week earlier.
The institute attributed the revision to delayed death registrations and the inclusion of two additional days in its analysis, after mortality remained higher than expected following the heat wave.
The updated data covers the period from June 18 to July 3. Wallonia was the hardest-hit region, followed by Brussels and Flanders, according to the institute.
Sciensano's earlier report, covering deaths through July 1, put the regional breakdown at 919 additional deaths in Wallonia, 682 in Flanders and 159 in Brussels.
The institute said the heat wave affected all age groups, not only older residents, with 280 additional deaths recorded among people under 65.
Residential care homes accounted for 498 more deaths than usual over the same period.
The deadliest single day of the episode was June 27, when 641 deaths were recorded, more than double the typical daily figure.
Mortality remained elevated the following day, with 632 deaths, before easing toward the end of June as temperatures dropped.
Sciensano said the latest figures represent the highest excess mortality recorded during a heat wave since its records began in 2000, both in absolute numbers and as a percentage.
Belgium's previous high was the August 2020 heat wave, when 1,557 excess deaths were recorded, equivalent to excess mortality of 37.5%.
The institute said three factors combined to make the June 2026 heat wave exceptional: its duration, the intensity of temperatures and elevated ozone concentrations.
The Belgian toll formed part of a wider pattern across Europe during the same period. More than 10,000 excess deaths were recorded across European countries during the heat wave that struck the western part of the continent in late June, according to data from EuroMOMO, a mortality-monitoring network supported by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control and the World Health Organization. More than 9,000 of those deaths were among people aged 65 and older.
Separately, a study by researchers at Imperial College London, the U.K. Met Office and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine estimated that 2,700 people died from heat-related causes in England and Wales during the May and June heat waves, with climate change contributing to 42% of those deaths.
Sciensano noted that a degree of excess mortality is expected during heat waves and cold spells, but said the scale recorded in June 2026 stood out from the historical pattern.
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