A decline in damaging European windstorms has led to a reduction in insured losses in the 21st century. This decline is explored through understanding how and why a damaging windstorm characteristic has changed in recent years. For individual windstorm events, the area of damaging winds is shown to have reduced due to a significant decrease in extreme winds in north-western Europe. This decline is largely related to changes in a large-scale atmospheric circulation pattern in the North Atlantic.