Rising temperatures and an expected increase in the frequency of droughts and heat waves have raised concerns about forest fires in cool-temperate and humid-continental regions. This concern is accompanied by a lack of detailed knowledge of fire behaviour and fire ecology in many of these regions. A special issue 'Forest fires in cool-temperate and humid-continental forests' was launched in early 2022 in Forestry to collect studies that address existing knowledge gaps. The featured research papers cover several topics related to remotely-sensed and field-based fuel assessment, flammability of forest fuels, fire behaviour, and fire effects. In this article, we provide an overview of the research papers and their main findings. Based on the results of the special issue and a review of recent literature, we identified major directions for future research that address fire behaviour, fuel characteristics and post-fire forest management.