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What We Know About Oregon’s 2026 Wildfire Season
Oregon is heading into what state leaders and federal forecasters say could be one of the most challenging wildfire seasons in recent memory. Nine counties are already under drought emergency declarations. Snowpack across the Northwest is one-third of normal. The 2025–26 winter tied 1934 as the warmest on record.
The conditions are real. So are the tools we have to manage our forests, prevent fires and protect the communities and wildlife that depend on Oregon’s working forests.
The conditions are stacking up
At a May 5 briefing in Salem, Gov. Tina Kotek and state agency leaders warned that drought, record-low snowpack and a historically warm winter have set up a fire season likely to arrive earlier and last longer than usual. NOAA’s outlook through October calls for above-normal temperatures and below-average precipitation, with elevated wildfire risk east of the Cascades beginning in June and expanding into southwestern Oregon by July.
The forecast isn’t theoretical. Oregon’s first Level 3 evacuation of 2026 happened in La Pine in March, before fire season officially began. And more than 70% of Oregon wildfires are started by people, often unintentionally. That means most of the fires we’ll see this year are not inevitable. Visit Keep Oregon Green to find tips on how to reduce your risk.
How active forest management reduces wildfire risk
The conditions for a difficult fire season are largely out of our hands. How our forests are managed isn’t.
Evidence-based forest management provides among the most effective tools for reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire. Working forests, those that are planted, thinned, harvested, and replanted in a sustainable cycle, are healthier, more resilient, and less prone to the extreme fire behavior that overwhelms communities. Key practices include:
- Tree thinning removes overcrowded, sick or small trees, reducing available fuel and giving healthy trees more room to thrive.
- Mechanized harvest removes timber for renewable wood products while reducing fuel loads on the landscape.
- Controlled burning clears underbrush during cooler, wetter months, when fires can be safely managed.
- Forest road networks give firefighters reliable access to remote fires. A small fire reached quickly is far easier to stop than a large one reached too late.
- Aggressive initial attack on fires that ignite during hot, dry summer months ensure fires don’t become large and unnecessarily tie up critical firefighting resources.
These are techniques Oregon foresters have refined for generations, and they remain our strongest defense against the conditions 2026 is shaping up to deliver.
We all want to see Oregon thrive
Around the home, the State Fire Marshal recommends clearing flammable debris, creating a 5-foot buffer around your house, and signing up for emergency alerts at OR-Alert. Beyond your property, you can support the policies and practices that keep Oregon’s forests healthy and resilient. For this fire season and the ones to come.
