Swiss glaciers lose 5.5% of their ice volume in 2026

Swiss glaciers lost an estimated 5.5% of their ice volume during the 2025–26 monitoring year, according to findings reported on 1 October by the Guardian and Switzerland’s Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research. The loss followed a winter with little snow and repeated summer heatwaves, adding to a rapid decline in ice across the Swiss Alps.

The Guardian reports that Swiss glacier ice volume has fallen 19.4% since 2021. The latest annual loss was just below the record set in 2022, making the scale of this year’s change striking even against a recent period of heavy retreat. Those percentages describe estimated ice volume across Switzerland, rather than the area lost by any single glacier.

Why Swiss glaciers lost so much ice in 2026

The Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, or WSL, says snow depths at every elevation were far below the long-term average during winter 2025–26. Low precipitation was the main reason, it says. By mean snow depth, the November-to-April season was among the ten least snowy winters since measurements began.

That left glaciers with less protective snow as warmer weather arrived. According to WSL, each month from May through September brought dry conditions and at least one heatwave. Snow cover on parts of the glaciers had disappeared during June heatwaves; by September, WSL says, no snow remained even at 3,500 metres above sea level.

The 2026 loss was slightly smaller than in 2022 despite higher temperatures, WSL says. It points to somewhat greater snow cover at the end of winter than in 2022 and less Saharan dust settling on the snow. With less dust darkening the surface, more sunlight could be reflected. The available account does not assign a numerical share of the difference between the two years to each factor.

Which glaciers show the change

Some of Switzerland’s largest glaciers experienced their greatest recorded melt in 2026, according to WSL. The institute names Allalin, Clariden, Grosser Aletsch and Rhône among the exceptions where losses exceeded their previous records, even though the national loss remained just below the 2022 peak.

Smaller glaciers are disappearing altogether. WSL names the Bella Tola Glacier and Griessfiren, also known as Plattalvafirn, among the losses. Researchers have not yet completed a formal count of glaciers that disappeared in 2026, the Guardian reports, so those examples should not be read as a national tally.

Matthias Huss, an ETH Zurich glaciologist and lead author of the monitoring report, described visiting a recently ice-covered site in an interview with the Guardian. He said it had become a rocky landscape with scattered blocks of old ice still melting on the rocks. Huss told the newspaper that the former Plattalvafirn or Griess glacier had lost 99% of its area over 20 years.

Huss also described changes that are harder to see from the edge of a glacier. Water streams beneath the ice can carve caverns whose roofs collapse, he told the Guardian. He said these internal failures can break glaciers apart and hasten their retreat, alongside the more familiar loss of ice from the surface.

What the ice loss means for meltwater

The losses matter beyond the changing Alpine landscape because glacier ice feeds meltwater during the warmer months. WSL says meltwater is currently helping to ease summer water shortages. It also says that contribution is diminishing as the area covered by ice shrinks, making the continuing reduction in glaciers relevant to future water management.

WSL estimates that glaciers released about 2,200 billion litres of water between July and September 2026, more than four times the annual drinking-water consumption of Swiss households. That comparison conveys the scale of the summer melt. It does not, by itself, establish a measured effect on any particular water supply or electricity system.

For now, the annual monitoring establishes a large national loss and identifies the weather conditions that accompanied it. The final number of individual glaciers lost this year remains unsettled. The next Swiss Glacier Inventory, expected around 2028 according to the monitoring research, should allow a fuller count of how many have disappeared.