14 November 2026, London, GB: The United Kingdom’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has raised its assessment of the risk that highly pathogenic avian influenza poses to British poultry and wild birds, as outbreaks of the H5N1 and H5N5 strains spread across multiple European countries through October and into November.
In its latest outbreak assessment, dated November 6, Defra raised the risk of HPAI incursion into wild bird populations in Great Britain from medium to high, meaning the agency judges the event now occurs very often. The risk to poultry kept under non-stringent or suboptimal biosecurity was raised from low to medium, while the risk to flocks kept under stringent biosecurity measures was raised from very low to low.
Since October 1, Great Britain has recorded four new infected poultry premises: H5N5 in a backyard flock on the Isle of Lewis, and H5N1 cases in Northumberland, Lanarkshire and Lincolnshire. Separately, 20 dead wild birds testing positive for the virus, 16 for H5N1 and four for H5N5, have been found across 14 counties, 18 in England and two in Scotland.
Outbreaks spread across the continent
The wider European picture described in the assessment, drawing on data reported to the World Organisation for Animal Health and the Animal Disease Information System, shows the virus active well beyond Britain’s shores. Between October 1 and November 2, 12 poultry outbreaks were confirmed across the continent, including one in Albania, two in Bulgaria, and three each in Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. A further German poultry case stemmed from a separate incident earlier in the year. Data for the week to November 4 added additional poultry outbreaks in Germany and Norway.
Wild bird surveillance recorded 69 positive cases of HPAI in Europe over the same five-week window, with the Netherlands and Denmark accounting for 13 and 11 cases respectively, and smaller numbers confirmed in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Estonia, Hungary, Italy and Norway. A related strain, H5N5, was also detected in wild birds in Iceland, Norway and Germany. The assessment notes that H5N1 has been spreading westward through southern Europe, with cases reported in Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Albania, as well as in northeastern Italy.
Several affected governments have already tightened controls in response. The Netherlands imposed a national housing order requiring poultry keepers to confine their birds after recording three separate poultry outbreaks. Denmark raised its own assessment of the risk that wild birds pose to poultry flocks from medium to high. Norway’s government banned bird hunting in seven municipalities in Rogaland county, an area with significant wild bird activity, while France raised its national risk level from negligible to moderate.
Defra’s assessment attributes the heightened UK risk in part to the seasonal migration of wild waterfowl into Britain from continental Europe and the Arctic, a pattern that historically coincides with a rise in HPAI detections each autumn and winter. The agency’s uncertainty around the poultry risk level for flocks under non-stringent biosecurity was described as medium, reflecting the difficulty of predicting exactly how the virus will move between wild bird populations and commercial or backyard flocks over the coming weeks. The uncertainty attached to the risk level for flocks under stringent biosecurity measures was assessed as low.
The assessment is the eleventh in a series Defra has published tracking the HPAI situation in Great Britain and Europe since the start of the current autumn and winter surveillance period, and the agency has indicated it will continue to update the risk levels as new outbreak and surveillance data become available from UK and European authorities.
HPAI outbreaks in Europe typically rise each year as migratory waterfowl move south and west from breeding grounds in the Arctic and northern Russia, passing through or wintering in wetlands across the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany and the British Isles. Wild birds can carry the virus without showing symptoms, and transmission to commercial and backyard poultry generally occurs when droppings or other contaminated material come into contact with farmed birds, which is why biosecurity measures such as housing orders, controlled access to feed and water sources, and disinfection of footwear and equipment are the primary tools authorities use to break that chain.
The three-tier biosecurity framework Defra uses to assess poultry risk, distinguishing between flocks kept under stringent, non-stringent and suboptimal measures, is intended to help individual keepers understand how much the current outbreak picture affects their own holdings, rather than treating all poultry premises as facing an identical level of exposure. Officials in several of the affected countries have said they expect to review their own national risk levels again before the end of the year, depending on how outbreak numbers develop through the remainder of the migration season.
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