European Countries With The Most Forest Cover

Here is a number that sounds invented: forests cover about 31% of the planet's land, some 4.1 billion hectares of trees. Europe holds a healthy share of that, although exactly how you count it runs into one very large, very forested elephant in the room. Russia has more forest than any country on Earth, roughly 815 million hectares, but the overwhelming majority of it sprawls across Siberia, firmly in Asia. So we are going to do what most forest rankings quietly do and bench Russia, which throws the race open to everyone else. (Turkey, in fairness, also keeps most of its landmass in Asia, but it turns up on Europe's books often enough that we will let it stay.) With the giant on the sidelines, here are the European countries sitting on the most trees.

Europe's Most Forested Countries

Sweden

Sweden runs away with the top spot, with just under 28 million hectares of forest blanketing roughly 69% of the country. Head north into Norrland and the trees basically never quit: dense boreal stands of Scots pine, Norway spruce, and birch that feed one of the planet's biggest timber and paper industries. Swedes take their woods seriously, with some of the oldest forestry laws anywhere, even as a growing population and heavy logging keep the pressure on. The country's old heartland even has forests with names straight out of a saga, Kolmården, Tiveden, and Tylöskog, the historic border woodlands that once separated its medieval provinces.

Turkey

Here is the surprise of the whole list. Turkey has quietly climbed to second place, with nearly 22.7 million hectares of forest, the payoff of decades of aggressive tree-planting that have pushed its numbers steadily upward. Its woodlands crowd the rainy Black Sea coast and the Mediterranean hills in a mix of pine, oak, beech, and cedar. Yes, most of Turkey technically sits in Asia, but on the European forest leaderboard it walks away with a very respectable runner-up medal.

Finland

Measure by share instead of sheer size and Finland is the greenest of the lot: about 74% of the country is under trees, the highest proportion anywhere in Europe. That comes to roughly 22.4 million hectares, nearly all of it boreal forest of pine, spruce, and birch. The famous land of a thousand lakes is really a land of vastly more than a thousand trees, and forestry has shaped its economy and identity for generations.

Spain

Spain might conjure images of sun-baked plains, but it is far leafier than its reputation, with about 18.6 million hectares of forest across roughly 37% of the country. Much of it spreads over the Iberian Peninsula it shares with Portugal, a patchwork of holm oak and cork oak groves and Mediterranean pine. And contrary to the doom and gloom you might expect, Spain has actually been gaining forest for decades through large-scale planting, one of Europe's quieter afforestation success stories.

France

France rounds out the top five with around 17.5 million hectares, about 31% of the country. And here is a fact that catches people off guard: French forests are not shrinking, they are booming. France has been steadily adding trees for more than a century, its woodland area roughly doubling since the 1800s as farmland gave way to forest and planting programs took hold. Storied stretches like the Forêt de Fontainebleau, a longtime haunt of painters and rock climbers, belong to a national forest estate that keeps quietly growing.

Norway

Norway stays firmly boreal, with about 12.2 million hectares of forest, close to a third of the mainland, threaded between the fjords and mountains. Spruce, pine, and birch dominate, and much of it is working forest that has supplied timber for centuries, stave churches and ski chalets alike.

Germany

Germany comes next with roughly 11.4 million hectares, about a third of the country, home to the storied Black Forest in the southwest and spruce plantations across the central uplands. German woodlands have had a brutal couple of decades, though, hammered by drought and bark beetle outbreaks that killed off vast numbers of spruce and set off a national scramble to replant with hardier, more varied species.

Propping Up The Table

At the other end of the ranking, things thin out fast. Malta's forest cover rounds to a rounding error, under 500 hectares in total. Gibraltar and Monaco have essentially none. And then there is Iceland, whose near-total absence of trees is such a national in-joke that Icelanders will tell you the way out of one of their forests is to stand up. Centuries of Viking-era clearing stripped the island bare, and although Iceland is now planting hard, it still sits near the bottom with well under 1% forest cover.

Europe's Forests Are Actually Growing

For all the grim headlines, Europe is one of the few places where the forest story runs broadly positive. The EU alone counts around 159 million hectares of forest, an area that has grown by roughly 10% since 1990 as countries plant trees and let old farmland slide back into woodland. That cuts against the global trend: worldwide, about 489 million hectares of forest have been lost since 1990, and 2024 saw a grim record, roughly 30 million hectares of tree cover gone in a single year, much of it to wildfire. Europe is not immune, since its own fire seasons keep getting worse, but on balance the continent is still adding trees, and the EU has pledged to plant 3 billion more by 2030.

European Countries By Forest Cover

Here is the full ranking of European countries by total forest area, in thousand hectares, drawn from FAO data. Russia, as noted, is sitting this one out.