Abstract. Although shallow landslides are a very widespread phenomenon, large area (e.g. thousands of square kilometres) early warning systems are commonly based on statistical rainfall thresholds, while physically based models are more commonly applied to smaller areas. This work provides a contribution towards the filling of this gap: a forecasting chain is designed assembling a numerical weather prediction model, a statistical rainfall downscaling tool and a geotechnical model for the distributed calculation of the factor of safety on a pixel-by-pixel basis. The forecasting chain can be used to forecast the triggering of shallow landslides with a 48 h lead time and was tested on a 3200 km² wide area.