While fans fight fires, UEFA fuels the flames
Playing football outside in the warmer months has been part of European life for generations; but fan climate campaign group Fossil Free Football are concerned that recent trends in extreme weather may be putting that tradition at risk. Following the hottest summer on record in 2024, large parts of Europe again faced dangerously high temperatures and serious wildfires in 2025. While summer used to mean enjoying time at play outside, for many it is now defined by seeking shelter from heat, fire and storms.
This shift has deep implications for European football, even at the elite level, because its own success is fundamentally tied to the health of the pyramid below it. So UEFA, the governing body trusted to safeguard the future of the European game, has every incentive to promote serious climate action aimed at keeping summer fit for football. Instead, Fossil Free Football accuses UEFA of sitting firmly on the side of major polluters, who continue to profit from the fossil fuels making extreme weather worse.
In its latest publication, Fossil Free Football detailed the summer’s climate impacts and contextualised them with information about UEFA’s pollution footprint:
Heat
June 30 saw “one of the highest daily temperatures ever observed” in Western Europe, despite being weeks before the height of summer
Portuguese "feels-like" temperatures reached 48°C while parts of Spain experienced 18 more ‘tropical nights’ above 20°C than average in June alone.
Fire
More than ten thousand square kilometres lost in total, an area about six times the size of Greater London.
40% of the fire occurred in Spain, while Germany, Slovakia and Cyprus experienced their worst year in decades and Romania and France also lost large swathes of land.
An unprecedented 41 megatonnes of carbon dioxide was released into the atmosphere, worsening climate change and future extreme weather.
Smoke
94% of the EU's urban population is already exposed to sub-standard air, but a major 2025 study found that wildfire smoke is actually even more deadly than regular air pollution. Smoke deaths are estimated to be undercounted by 93%
In Greece, authorities therefore instructed citizens to take measures including mask wearing and avoiding physical activity outdoors, while residents in Marseille were asked to close windows to keep smoke out.
Extreme weather events shrink the time in which Europeans can safely get active outside, whether moving about their cities, having a kickabout in the park or playing at the elite level. Fossil Free Football dug into how organised sport was impacted, highlighting both devastating climate impacts but also important displays of solidarity.
French amateur team Corbières FC was totally destroyed by fire. Fortunately, their community, as well as football fans and other organisations across France have come together to provide support as they rebuild.
Heat warnings were in place for the start of the Women European Championships, despite the tournament being hosted in Alpine Switzerland.
Many teams were forced to cancel or postpone fixtures because of heat and fire. Including in Bordeaux, Toulouse and in France and Huesca in Spain. Pontevedra CF reported beginning their training early in the morning.
Of course, if climate impacts are reaching professional teams, they are undoubtedly preventing many amateur matches, junior competitions and casual kickabouts from occurring. These stories are far less likely to make headlines, but are still important. When children and amateurs lose access to the game, such as when traditional end of school year youth tournaments were cancelled in regional France, their relationship with football is eroded. If this impact is multiplied in towns and cities across Europe, football at all levels will suffer.
Fossil Free Football collected some inspiring examples of fans and players taking action in response to Europe’s summer of extreme weather. In Greece, supporters from Gate 13, a Panathinaikos supporter’s club — joined firefighting efforts and organised collections of first aid supplies for displaced families and firefighters. In Cyprus, ultras group Gate 9 of Omonoia 29M created its own voluntary unit of firefighters and gathered donations after wildfires. While in Spain, clubs and federations organised a charity match —Football for Our Land—to raise funds for areas devastated by wildfires in Castilla y León and Galicia.
But if players and fans are doing what they can, how is UEFA, football’s governing body, responding to the threat? Fossil Free Football finds that its laudable climate target, halving its emissions by 2030, has been totally undermined with a series of damaging pro-pollution moves.
The storytelling around football is a huge part of what makes it so compelling, but fans are inundated with pro-pollution messaging when they watch European football. UEFA has taken half a billion Euros to promote Qatar Airways in its competitions to 2030, despite long-haul air travel being one of the most climate damaging choices an individual can make. Researchers from Scientists for Global Responsibility and the Cool Down Network had previously found that this deal alone will result in carbon pollution equivalent to that of a coal-fired power station each year. Fossil Free Football also charted the advertising seen by fans in this season’s Champions League competition, finding that every team (apart from two smallest) had at least one carbon intensive sponsor. Importantly, the most highly fancied teams, attracting the biggest followings, are the heaviest promoters of polluting industries. Of the 18 highest seeded, six have a highly polluting shirt sponsor tied to a major oil and gas exporter: PSG, Real Madrid, Manchester City, Arsenal, Atletico Madrid, Benfica (three of which also hold stadium naming rights). Other clubs promote vehicle manufacturers that remain committed to the wide-scale production of large fossil fuelled powered cars and trucks. Others, such as Bayern Munich and Liverpool, promote financial services providers that profit from funding or insuring the fossil fuel industry. Companies that are closely tied to the production of plastics are also heavily involved.
At the same time, UEFA’s direct impact has massively expanded. It decided to expand the Champions League by 38%, meaning 279 games are now played across the tournament and making it 18% more polluting (equivalent to adding annual emissions of 150,000 cars per the research cited above). Other work suggested that the extra matches across all three major competitions would add half a billion air miles. Fossil Free Football looked into just two fixtures to uncover the massive pollution toll. It found that each of their fans who took the 14,000km return trip to Lisbon would pollute 3,800kg of carbon dioxide equivalent while each player or staff member would be responsible for 8,500kg! This comes as the amount of carbon pollution each person can emit, while still keeping global heating to the safe zone of ‘only’ 1.5 degrees, is just 2,800 kg each year.
At a time when our changing climate is clearly making conditions for football in Europe worse, the organisation responsible for safeguarding the sport is choosing to promote pollution and expand its direct impact. Fossil Free Football call on UEFA to get serious about protecting the game at all levels by rapidly slashing the fossil fuel emissions involved in everything it does. We urge it to institute a tobacco style ban on advertising by major polluters and reverse its competition expansion to reduce the need for air travel. The future of European summer football relies on UEFA to lead the game boldly away from fossil fuels, not continue with a climate-blind business as usual approach.
—-
Fossil Free Football is a fan climate campaign group and member of the Cool Down Sport for Climate Action Group. Read the full publication here.