A clip circulating online since last week shows two separate visuals of melting traffic lights, with users claiming the scenes were from Italy and Germany.

CLAIM

Traffic lights melt in Italy, Germany due to intense heatwave

WHAT HAPPENED

Since early June 2026, Europe has been enduring an intense heatwave with the mercury climbing up to 40 degrees Celsius. Temperatures topped records in Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany and Poland, while storms broke out in other parts of Europe.

In France,1,000 excess deaths were recorded during the record-breaking heatwave, with the public health agency saying that most of the heat-related fatalities involved older people. It further warned that the number was expected to rise as more details were coming to the fore about deaths in residential care and private homes.

Scientists have said the heatwave, which began on June 20, was the worst recorded in Europe, and the blistering conditions have disrupted power generation, damaged infrastructure and overwhelmed healthcare systems.

“Right now 150 million people are living under extreme heat, hundreds have died, schools are shut, grids are buckling,” World Health Organisation Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X. “Driven by climate change and global warming, the phenomenon of the ‘once-in-a-generation’ heatwave is now occurring nearly annually. We were warned,” he ⁠wrote.

Over the past few days, social media has been abuzz with chatter on the heatwave, with photos and videos being shared from across Europe. One such clip, which has been circulating online since last week, shows two separate visuals of melting traffic lights. Users claimed the scenes were from Italy and Germany, respectively.

“The heat in northern Italy melted the traffic lights,” one post reads. It garnered about 81,000 views. The video was also shared by several other accounts with the same claim, as seen here, here, here, here, and here.

The video was also shared on Instagram, as seen here, here and here.

The clip was also shared by Cevre TV, which describes itself as a Turkiye-based television channel exclusively dedicated to environmental issues, on Instagram. The channel’s post was later shared by Khaleej Times in a news story dated June 29.

WHAT WE FOUND

A keyword search was conducted to check if any credible European or international news outlets had reported on melting traffic lights or shared any such visuals. However, it did not yield any results.

A reverse image search on the first visual in the viral clip, which was allegedly from Italy, yielded a news report by Italian regional television channel Telenuovo, dated June 25, 2026. According to the article, the clip — which shows visuals from Lugagnano in the Verona province of Italy — was first uploaded to Instagram, after which it went viral.

It stated that while the traffic light was indeed damaged, the reason was not record heat. “Its melting was caused by a car fire that broke out nearby a few days ago, with the flames reaching the traffic light system,” the report said.

A similar report was also carried by Il Baco da Seta, an Italian news and media website, on June 28. It called the claim false, saying that the traffic lights melted due to a blaze in the area.

The same was also reported by Italian digital entertainment portal Everyeye.it in an article published on June 28. “The melting was caused by a car fire that broke out nearby a few days earlier, with the flames reaching the traffic light, causing significant damage,” it said of the melted traffic signal.

A keyword search conducted to check if a fire was reported in Lugagnano within the same timeline yielded a news report by Il Baco da Seta dated June 23, 2026. It stated that a car caught fire in the locality, “right at the main traffic light”.

“Firefighters responded to the scene to put out the flames and secure the area, along with the Sona local police, who managed traffic at a particularly sensitive point for traffic in Lugagnano. Traffic was diverted to allow for firefighting operations and to avoid risks to motorists and passersby,” the report stated, adding that the cause of the fire was unknown.

Further results from the reverse image search also yielded an Instagram post dated June 28 by Claudio Valletta, a physicist and computational scientist.

The caption reads: “The video of the ‘traffic light melted because of the heat’ has gone viral everywhere. But no, it didn’t melt in the sun. The video is real, the traffic light really exists, but according to the local reconstruction works, the cause was a car that caught fire nearby.”

He explained that while temperatures of 35 or 40 degrees Celsius were dangerous, they were “not enough to deform the technical plastics of a traffic light”. For that, he added, a much more intense heat source was needed.

Subsequently, a reverse image for the second visuals, claimed to be from Germany, was conducted. The results yielded an X post by digital news outlet INW English, which clarified that the damage was not caused by the sun.

“This video was taken in front of Wilde Renate, a nightclub on the banks of the River Spree in Berlin. The venue was destroyed in a fire in the summer of 2025. The blaze generated enough heat to damage the traffic light directly outside the building,” it reads, adding that the damaged signal was no longer in service.

A keyword search to corroborate this led to a Yahoo News story from June 2025, which confirmed that the blaze at the nightclub had damaged a traffic light nearby.

The same was also reported by RBB24, the central multimedia news brand and platform of Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg, in an article dated June 19, 2025. It stated that the damaged traffic light was located at the intersection of Markgrafendamm and Alt-Stralau.

For further confirmation, comparing visuals of the viral clip with the Google Street View of Alt-Stralau revealed that the traffic signal seen in the video was the same as the one damaged in the nightclub fire.

In both visuals, a white building can be seen opposite the traffic light, along with multiple stickers pasted on the same.