Abstract In Europe and the Mediterranean region, the vegetation and climate of the Neogene is well understood, due to the abundance of pollen data, allowing the climate evolution at a time of global cooling to be described. This paper presents a climatic reconstruction of four key time-slices of the Neogene: the Mid-Miocene (c. 14 Ma), the Late Miocene (c. 10 Ma), the Early Pliocene (c. 5–5.3 Ma) and the Mid-Pliocene (c. 3.6 Ma). The results show that Neogene climate was warmer than today and that the transition from a weak latitudinal thermic gradient (around 0.48 ºC/degree in latitude) to a gradient similar to that of today (0.6 ºC/degree in latitude) took place at the end of the Miocene. The latitudinal precipitation gradient was more accentuated than today from the Mid-Miocene to the Mid-Pliocene, with higher precipitation than today in northwestern Europe and the northwestern Mediterranean but with conditions that were drier than or equivalent to today in the southwestern Mediterranean region.