Europe's hydro drought has moved north

Reservoirs are near decade lows in the Nordics and decade highs in Iberia — 2026 is 2022 turned upside down, and prices are following the water

Pull the weekly reservoir data for every hydro market on the ENTSO-E Transparency Platform and one picture jumps out: the water has swapped ends of the continent.

Each panel shows weekly reservoir filling as a share of that market's peak, with 2026 in blue against the 2016–25 range. The pink line is 2022 — the last time Europe had a hydro year bad enough to make front pages.

In 2022 the drought was southern. Spain and Portugal spent that whole year pinned to the bottom of their ten-year envelope — Portugal flat around 30% through the summer — and Italy's Po valley crisis put its line on the floor of the band too. The Nordics, meanwhile, had a roughly normal year.

In 2026 the picture has flipped. Norway and Sweden drew down through the spring along the very bottom of their decade range — Sweden touched its ten-year minimum in April, and both dipped deeper than they did in 2022. The snowmelt refill has since pulled them back towards the median, but the hydrological hole peaked at more than 25 TWh across the Nordic region. At the other end of the map, Spain and Portugal are hugging the top of their ranges, and Greece has been above its interquartile band all year.