They had come for the sun. They will leave because of the heat. After five years spent in Avignon (Vaucluse), Khalid and his family decided to leave the south-east of France. “We tell ourselves that we no longer have a future in a region affected by heatwaves and drought like that,” says this computer engineer, father of three young children. Over the years, the climate had become “unbearable”. But, for him, as for dozens of Internet users who responded to our call for testimonies, it was the summer of 2026 that marked a turning point.
At the end of May, Khalid, who came to help out in his wife's pizzeria, felt unwell in front of the oven heated to 400°C. The heat waves intensified and, "even if it meant losing money", the couple decided to close the restaurant in mid-July, at the height of the tourist season. The children were removed from the leisure center, which was transformed into a non-air-conditioned “furnace”. Their house, although a hundred years old and weathered in Provencal temperatures, proved powerless in the face of the repeated assaults of heatwaves and tropical nights. Since the start of summer, Avignon has experienced more than 40 nights without a temperature below 20°C, according to Météo-France, cited by ICI Vaucluse.
Decision was made to go to Ariège, "to find fresh air" in the Pyrenees. At altitude, Khalid's vacation turned into real estate prospecting. “The prices are still affordable and, with my profile in IT, I know that I will be able to easily find a teleworking position, recognizes the 43-year-old father. An hour's drive from Toulouse, we will be able to reconcile our professional life and this new requirement: living cool and green.”
Thomas has already taken action. “I put my house up for sale a few weeks ago,” announces this 51-year-old child welfare family assistant, residing in the south of Gironde. “But the agencies warned me: it’s going to be complicated to find a buyer at the moment in the Landes of Gascony.” Too bad if he has to lower his price. He suffered too much "from the smoke and stress because of the fires" which ravaged this part of New Aquitaine throughout the month of July.
At Thomas's home, on the outskirts of the Landes, the forest fire season brought back the trauma of the summer of 2022, when he had been "on the verge of being evacuated" with his four children. The tens of thousands of hectares that went up in smoke again this summer convinced him to hasten his return to his native Brittany, where he was only considering returning to live in around ten years, for retirement.
“It feels strange to me to move out of fear that the area will become no longer livable.”
Thomas, resident of South Gironde, in the Landes forest
But not everyone has the opportunity to change region. In the Bordeaux suburbs, Christine feels stuck by her part-time job within the Gironde prefecture. However, she fears facing another summer like this, when Bordeaux recorded an absolute record of 42.5°C at the end of June. The 56-year-old civil servant claims to have experienced "a nightmare" in her large attic housing project, facing south, where she experienced "discomfort after uneasiness". “I felt dizzy and, some days, I couldn’t leave the house because my legs no longer carried me,” she describes.
Suffocating in her room, she took refuge every night on her terrace with her mattress, to sleep under the stars. Not enough to prevent him from becoming, through lack of sleep, “a real zombie”. “By living in the dark, I lost my joy of living and I started to see everything negatively,” she says. It was too much. At the beginning of August, she requested a HLM transfer to obtain “small accommodation far from concrete”. Since then, she has spent her free time selling her furniture and approaching social landlords in the Arcachon basin, "as close as possible to water and freshness". She knows that the area has been hit by forest fires. But she can no longer “suffocate” in the city.
For a majority of French people, the response to this overheating summer will not be through leaving, but through adapting their housing. “We want to keep our house and raise children there one day,” says Mathieu, 34, in Mulhouse (Haut-Rhin). "Unfortunately, despite our ceiling fans, it has become unlivable as it is. We had peaks of 35°C in certain rooms. Our mental and physical health was affected. So we decided to break the bank and we are going to have air conditioning installed. We have just signed a quote for 6,000 euros."
A teacher in a high school, Mathieu believes he is one of the “privileged” who can afford such an investment, unlike his family or some of his close friends, who find themselves “without a concrete solution”. “Some have serious physical disabilities and the heatwaves have aggravated their health concerns,” he worries. Hence his “anger” at the lack of financial aid and the passivity of public authorities. For lack of anything better, to help those around them, he and his wife will make their house a place of refuge.
“Next summer, with air conditioning, we will accommodate relatives whose health is now at stake.”
Mathieu, resident of Haut-Rhin
In Oise, Pierre, 50, is also considering giving in to the sirens of air conditioning. “I don’t see many alternatives to cope with the hot nights that we experienced, especially in the attic,” assures this manager of a HLM office. Still affected by the heatwaves, which caused him "fatigue", "irritability" and "less efficiency at work", he is however hesitant to take the plunge. “Air conditioning contributes to the problem by heating the surrounding air and generating additional energy costs,” he says.
Don't go talking to Toni about air conditioning*. “When I see people jumping on the air conditioning and continuing to take planes, I tell myself that humanity does not understand the disaster in progress,” this 58-year-old Strasbourg resident despairs. A graphic designer by profession, he asserts his choice not to refrigerate his house, protected by thick walls, nor his office, where he spent the summer at 31°C alone with his fan, his feet in a basin of cold water and his body regularly sprayed with a spray bottle. All at the cost of heavy, swollen and painful legs.
By next summer, Toni is banking on future ceiling fans and, above all, on a civic and political revival. “My choice not to have air conditioning is as much the expression of a conviction as of a revolt in the face of policies that are not up to par,” accuses this father, one of whose daughters is an activist within the radical ecology network Les Uprisings of the Earth. “After this summer’s climate disaster, we may experience a political earthquake next year in the presidential election,” he fears. “All of this makes me want to get involved in my turn.”
On the scale of his garden near Poitiers (Vienna), Dominique thinks about disobeying. Heatwaves and drought took their toll on his lawn, some of his shrubs and his apple harvest, burned by the sun. "I had never seen that! Even though I expected it, I was surprised like a bruise," admits this 60-year-old salesman with a green thumb. Barely recovered from the shock, he decided to make his 4,000 m2 into an island of freshness capable of withstanding the hostile conditions of the 21st century.
To provide shade in his garden, Mediterranean species such as the plane mulberry, resistant to heat, lack of water and storms, already appeal to him. Dominique is also working on wooden pergolas, covered with vines. “But for that, you have to go through a declaration of work to be validated at the town hall, or even an application for a building permit,” he is indignant. He sees it as one example among others of “draconian” rules which slow down adaptation to global warming, which he says he is ready to circumvent.
“I have the impression of being stuck in prehistory, because, despite the climate emergency, there is no flexibility in terms of urban planning.”
Dominique, resident of Poitou
Muriel enjoys a small victory. With a collective of residents from Cusset, on the outskirts of Vichy (Allier), this sixty-year-old obtained, this summer, the vote for a budget of 28,000 euros to create an island of trees in the center of the three buildings of her co-ownership. “Until now, our request had always been refused at the general meeting. The priority was always cleanliness or safety. Finally, we had to wait for this supreme heatwave for the co-owners to recognize that they had waited too long and voted for the project almost unanimously,” she says happily.
Over the months, the cars parked there will have to share the space with benches, picnic tables and plantations, planned for fall 2027. But until then, "air conditioning units will flourish on the balconies, despite our copro regulations which prohibit it", anticipates Muriel, fatalistic. Two more or less improvised adaptation logics, in the short and medium term, to continue to inhabit a planet which has not finished warming.
