Extreme Heat Awareness Day

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Extreme Heat Awareness Day 2026

Heatwaves are Australia’s deadliest environmental disaster. Climate change is making summers longer and hotter, and heatwaves more dangerous. Our cities are sweltering as the urban heat island effect makes it even hotter.

Once again, we’re teaming up with Australian Red Cross and other organisations, experts and other partners across Australia to launch the first ever Australian Extreme Heat Awareness Day on February 4th, 2026!

Are you looking for heat health safety information? Scroll to the bottom for a list of resources.

What can you Expect? Read a recap of the first Australian Extreme Heat Awareness Day Here

Whether you’re an individual wanting to take action, looking for information for your organisation, or working in government or policy-making, there are lots of ways for you to be part of the first Extreme Heat Awareness Day

How you can get involved

Check in

Have a conversation with family, friends or colleages about the impacts of extreme heat and why urgent action is needed to prevent heatwave disasters in our communities, cities, and suburbs.

Here’s a guide on how you can check-in on your friends, family, and neighbours during heatwaves.

Learn more →

Get prepared

It’s easy to protect yourself, the people you love and your community. Find out more at Heatwaves and hot weather | Australian Red Cross or at our Heatwave Information page.

Use your voice on social media

On Feb 5th, all of us can use our voices and our networks to share stories, facts and solutions online. We’ll have posts that you can share, but personal stories or sharing your perspective will be even more compelling.

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and BlueSky and share our Extreme Heat Awareness Day posts.

Sign these petitions

Sign our two active petitions to ensure that no one is left behind during heatwaves:

Stop cutting centrelink payments during heatwaves

Ensure the safety of incarcerated women in a dangerously hot prison in the Northern Territory.

Attend a local event

Come along to our ‘Hot City, Cool People’ community event in Western Sydney

Extreme Heat Awareness Day will be marked all across the nation, click here to find an event near you!

How organisations can participate

Use your platform

Post about Extreme Heat Awareness on the social media network. Don’t forget to use #ExtremeHeatAwarenessDay and tag @SwelteringCities and @redcrossau
Need some inspiration on what to post? Email info@swelteringcities.org and we will send you the content guide.

Make a heat action plan

Have a conversation within your organisation about extreme heat and heatwave safety, including a plan of what actions are needed to protect your workplace, colleagues and communities during heatwaves.

Here’s 6 questions to start this conversation:

How do heatwaves or rising temperatures impact our work and our communities?
How can we increase knowledge and awareness of heat health risk internally and in the communities we work with?
How can we make plans to reduce the dangers of extreme heat in the short, medium and long term?
Do we have an OHS plan for very hot days?
Who in the organisation has responsibility for workplace or community safety if there is a heatwave?
What other organisations can we work with to increase awareness of extreme heat?

Send an email

Include Extreme Heat Awareness Day in your internal or external newsletter and share it with your email list to get others involved. Email info@swelteringcities.org and we will send you the content guide.

Bring people together

You can host an Extreme Heat Awareness Day event with your colleagues, community, or partners. Whether you do it on the day itself, or any day in the week, this is a great opportunity to share resources and talk about how heat impacts us all, and what contribution you can make to reducing heat danger.

What we’re calling on government to do

Support social infrastructure and community resilience

We’re calling on every level of government to fund heat resilience and preparedness plans. There are great examples of this work, including the Greater Sydney Heat Smart City Plan.

Social connection and community support are one of the most important ways that we keep people safe during heatwaves. Too often, the organisations and groups that do this work are underfunded or forced to compete for small grants. Community-facing and community-led organsations are leading in heatwave resilience, and should be funded to grow that work.

Climate action

Buring coal, oil and gas is driving up global temperatures. We are calling on government to take ambitious climate action to safeguard the health and wellbeing of present and future generations. We need to urgently move away from fossil fuels that are making heatwaves longer, more severe, and more frequent.

Planning to be safe in a hotter climate

Ensure that all new housing is built for a safe climate future, including a ban on dark roofs in new developments in hot suburbs.

Retrofits for heatwave safe homes

Support energy efficiency upgrades in homes, targeting social housing, rental homes, and low-income households. Everyone should be able to keep cool at home during heatwaves. At a federal level, we can increase the Social Housing Energy Upgrades Program to upgrade all social housing over the coming years so nobody is left behind.

Heat safe rentals

We would like to see political leaders champion cooling and insulation within rental minimum standards across the country to protect renters on hot days. 31% of Australian housholds are renters, and too many of them live in hot homes without the ability to make simple, common sense upgrades like insulation, ceiling fans, screen doors or better blinds.