<p>Environmental education (EE) raises students’ awareness of ecological crises and elicits a wide range of emotional responses, including eco-anxiety, eco-hope, eco-guilt, and eco-grief. Given the growing recognition of emotions as central to environmental learning, studying eco-emotions is essential for advancing both theoretical understanding and practical implementation of EE. These emotions play a mediating role in shaping the effectiveness of teaching–learning processes, fostering personal and collective resilience, motivating environmental action, and supporting psychological well-being. To explore these interconnections, semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 63 secondary school students engaged in EE programs across five provinces in Iran. The study developed a taxonomy of students’ eco-emotions within the Iranian EE system, examined the structural and contextual factors behind these emotions, and proposed strategies for adaptive coping and emotional regulation. The findings highlight the importance of acknowledging eco-emotional diversity and its implications for curriculum development, student mental health, and participatory pedagogy. Educators and policymakers must be equipped to address these emotional dimensions, not only to enhance learning outcomes but also to support the emotional resilience of young people facing ecological uncertainty. This research contributes to the emerging interdisciplinary discourse on eco-emotions and lays the groundwork for future conceptual and empirical development in this domain.</p> Graphical abstract <p></p>