For weeks, thousands of residents have been forced from their homes as fires sweep through parts of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, which together account for more than 60% of the total area burned. Emergency crews in Atlantic Canada, meanwhile, are battling out-of-control blazes that have strained limited resources.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, Premier John Hogan announced a temporary ban on off-road vehicles in forested areas, warning that the province "simply cannot afford any further risks." Nova Scotia, where nearly all wildfires are sparked by human activity, has also imposed restrictions — suspending camping, hiking and fishing in wooded areas — as bone-dry conditions keep the risk of ignition critically high.

"Conditions are really dry, there's no rain in sight, the risk is extremely high in Nova Scotia," Premier Tim Houston said. "We're doing everything we can to protect people, to protect property — and really just pray for rain."

A shifting fire geography

For much of the past century, the most destructive fires have struck British Columbia and Alberta, where vast forests and industrial activity created fertile ground for blazes. But that pattern has been disrupted. In 2023, Canada experienced its worst wildfire season on record, when thick smoke darkened skies as far south as New York and Washington. This year, experts say, the danger has become truly national.

"We had fire everywhere. We had evacuations everywhere. We had smoke at a scale that was remarkable," said Paul Kovacs, executive director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction at Western University. "This year is repeating all of that. Wildfire is now a national issue. It can show up anywhere."

Kovacs warned that more homes have been destroyed this year than last, and that residents in high-risk areas have yet to take meaningful steps to "harden" their properties against fire. "The burned area will not shrink back to what it was 25 years ago," he said. "This is the new reality, and Canadians need a change in mindset."

Already, nearly 7.5 million hectares (18.5m acres) have burned in 2025 — far above the ten-year seasonal average.

A national problem with no easy solution

While the federal government has announced new funding to study wildfire risk and adaptation, researchers stress that there is no one-size-fits-all response.

"British Columbia and Alberta have long been the poster children for wildfires, but now other regions are seeing the same challenges," said Jen Baron, a researcher at the University of British Columbia's Centre for Wildfire Coexistence. "This speaks to the pervasiveness of climate change: areas once considered low risk are no longer safe."

Baron pointed out that even in years where some regions receive more rain than average, temperatures across the country are trending higher, drying out landscapes and leaving them vulnerable to ignition. "There are very few parts of Canada that would be totally protected from wildfire," she said.

The shift has also raised questions about land management, urban sprawl into wilderness areas, and the role of Indigenous knowledge in forest stewardship. "We're only beginning to catch up with the scale of the problem," Baron added. "Wildfire is a natural ecological process, but climate change is making it increasingly difficult to manage."

A global crisis

Canada's crisis mirrors worsening fire seasons elsewhere. In Spain, authorities are struggling to contain 20 major blazes after fires killed three people and scorched more than 115,000 hectares this summer. Prime minister Pedro Sánchez has called for a "national pact" on climate resilience. Portugal has reported a seventeen-fold increase in burned land compared with last year, while Greece, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Albania have all requested help from the EU's firefighting force as record heat and strong winds drive flames across the Mediterranean.

For Canada, the lesson is clear, experts say: extreme fire years will no longer be once-in-a-generation events, but recurring features of a warming world.

"Instead of one big fire year every 15 or 20 years, every year will be big somewhere in the country," Baron said. "We don't know exactly where the droughts will strike, but we can be certain they will. That uncertainty is now our future."