Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year. We maintain this deficit by liquidating stocks of ecological resources and accumulating waste, primarily carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. A Country’s Overshoot Day marks the date when Earth Overshoot Day would fall if all of humanity consumed at the same level as the people in that country.
In March and June 2025 we published about Country and Earth Overshoot Day, an initiative of the Global Footprint Network .
The expected Country Overshoot Days for 2026 were published by the end of 2025 and we are pleased to share these. As usual, the Earth Overshoot Day is expected to be published in June. We made a few buttons to be used during actions and campaigns of Grandparents for Climate organizations and groups.
The richest 1% have already used their fair share.
According to analyses of carbon emissions and ecological footprints, the world’s richest 1 % of people effectively “used up” their fair share of the annual carbon budget extremely early in the year — roughly within the first 10 days of the year (around January 10). This means that if the richest 1 % of the global population were allocated an equal share of the carbon emissions “budget” consistent with limiting warming to agreed climate goals, they have already exceeded that share by about January 10 of the year.
This concept is sometimes described as an “overshoot day” for the richest 1 %, referring specifically to carbon emissions, not the full ecological resource footprint used in the general Earth Overshoot Day calculation for the whole of humanity.
There’s no official published “Earth Overshoot Day for the richest 1%” using the full ecological footprint method (the one Global Footprint Network uses globally). So the best that can be done is a back-of-the-envelope estimate, using a reasonable proxy for how much larger the top 1%’s footprint is than the global per-capita average. By doing so, that day would fall between 15 and 24 January.
And what about our members’ and related groups’ countries?
It’s interesting to see the Overshoot Days in 2025 and 2026 side by side for our members’ and related groups’ countries.
| Country | 2026 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Luxembourg | February 17 | February 17 |
| Denmark | March 20 | March 19 |
| Finland | April 1 | April 6 |
| Austria | April 2 | March 29 |
| Sweden | April 4 | April 10 |
| Belgium | April 11 | March 27 |
| Norway | Not available | April 16 |
| France | April 24 | April 19 |
| Switzerland | May 7 | May 11 |
| Germany | May 10 | May 3 |
| Netherlands | Not available | May 5 |
| United Kingdom | May 22 | May 20 |