Best Time to Visit Marrakech

The first is the reanalysis series used throughout this page: Open-Meteo's ERA5 archive, a gridded model reconstruction of the atmosphere, averaged here over the thirty complete years to 2024. The second is the set of climatological normals the World Meteorological Organization publishes on its World Weather Information Service for Marrakech, supplied by Morocco's own Direction de la Meteorologie Nationale and computed from station observations over the 1991 to 2020 standard normal period.

A grid cell and a station thermometer are not measuring the same thing. The cell is a model average over several hundred square kilometres of city and open plain; the station sits at one point, and the two periods differ by four years at each end. Both are official. Neither is wrong.

The gap is consistent in direction: the national service reads warmer than the reanalysis in every month compared, by about one degree on the maxima and by one and a half to two degrees on the minima. The rainfall difference is larger in proportion, roughly 50 mm on an annual total of a quarter of a metre.

Why this page uses the reanalysis series

Three reasons, none of them that the numbers look better. The series is reproducible: the query is a public URL, the response is 10,958 daily rows, and anyone can rerun it. It covers a period ending in 2024 rather than 2020, which matters in a warming climate. And it yields the two derived figures a traveller plans around, the monthly rainfall total and the count of days with at least a millimetre of rain, which the normals tables do not give in the same shape.

The practical consequence of the gap is small and worth stating anyway. If you are deciding whether July is survivable, the honest answer is that the two official series bracket it between 36.6C and 37.7C, and that a degree either way does not change the plan. If you are deciding whether a January courtyard needs a heater, the two series bracket the overnight low between 3.8C and 5.9C, and both answers mean yes.

What neither series measures

Both are shade temperatures at two metres above the ground, and the medina is not that. A lane one and a half metres wide under a reed roof runs several degrees cooler than the figure; the open ground at El Badi Palace or the unshaded stretch of Menara at two in the afternoon runs several degrees hotter. Neither series carries humidity, which stays low here, or wind.

No authority publishes a heat index or a heat-health warning threshold for the city, so this page prints the shade temperature and says what it leaves out.

That produces a genuine mismatch. The four Ministry sites, Bahia Palace, El Badi, the Saadian Tombs and the Almoravid Koubba, all shut while the thermometer is still near its peak, so there is nothing ticketed to walk into during the two hours when you most want a roof. The two venues that stay open later are both privately run, and the one that changes with the season does so by season rather than by heat.

The table below is the summer day as the published hours actually shape it. Hours come from each venue's own ticket page, read in Q3 2026.

The summer day that works

Out of the riad by 08:30 and into the first monument at opening. Two ticketed sights before 11:00, because the second one at 11:30 is already an endurance exercise. Back under a roof from midday until about 17:30, which is the hour a hammam or a long lunch exists for.

Out again at 18:00 for the souks and the square, both better after dark and neither charging admission. That shape costs you only the middle of the day, which was never going to be productive, and it is why a summer trip needs one more night than a spring trip to cover the same list.

What the heat does to a day trip

It reverses the logic. In spring the Atlas is a scenic day out; in July it is temperature control. Imlil sits at about 1,740 m, and the standard lapse rate alone puts it roughly eight degrees below the city. The Ourika valley runs water past the lunch tables, and Essaouira on the Atlantic is the largest single swing available in a day.

The Agafay desert is the exception that catches people out. It is stone desert an hour away at the same altitude, so it is not cooler, and the reason its trips run at sunset is that the middle of an Agafay afternoon in July is worse than the medina, not better.

The Worst Time to Visit, Said Plainly

If you want the answer to the question rather than the nuance around it: the worst time to visit Marrakech is July and August. The thirty-year series puts the average July maximum at 36.6C and August at 36.2C, which is an average rather than a peak, so the hot days in those months run well above it. Nothing about the city is arranged for that.

The ticketed monuments shut at 17:00, the square is empty until dark, the medina lanes hold the heat after sunset, and the day trips that make this city worth a week are all uphill or exposed. The heat is also the only variable here that no amount of planning removes: you can dress for rain in March and take a jacket in January, and there is nothing you can wear in a 40-degree afternoon. Everything else people call a bad time is manageable.

December nights are cold, at an average low of 5.1C, and the answer is a coat. March is the wettest month at 37.3 mm across about six rainy days, and the answer is an afternoon indoors.

March averages a daily high of 22.7C and a daily low of 7.5C, and it is the wettest month on the thirty-year record at 37.3 mm over 5.8 rain days. April is barely drier at 36.9 mm and 5.5 rain days, with highs of 24.7C. May is the pivot: 28.5C by day, and the rainfall halves to 17.3 mm over 4.2 days.

Read those rain figures properly. 37.3 mm is not a wet month by European standards, it is about a tenth of what falls on Manchester in March, and 5.8 rain days out of 31 means that five days in six are dry. What it does mean is that a March trip should not treat an open-air plan as guaranteed, and that the unshaded courtyards, which are most of the ticketed sights here, are occasionally unusable for an hour.

Why April is the busiest month

Nothing official measures it, so this is our reading and labelled as such. April is the intersection of European school holidays, comfortable weather and the last of the Atlas snow on the skyline, and it is when the tour calendars fill first. The consequence you can act on is booking distance rather than price: the small-group medina and souk walks and the Ourika day trips sell out on an April Saturday, and the palaces rarely do, because the Ministry sells at the gate.

May is the underrated month here: spring comfort in the morning, summer reliability in the afternoon, the rain effectively finished, and a thinner crowd than April.

The snow line is a winter and spring sight

From late winter into spring the High Atlas carries visible snow and stands behind the city on a clear morning from any rooftop. February is when the line sits lowest, and it is gone by late spring. Worth knowing if the photograph that made you book had white mountains in it: no June trip reproduces it.

October averages a daily high of 28.0C and a low of 13.5C, with 22.2 mm of rain over 4.0 days. That is a shirt-sleeves day and a jacket evening, which is the ideal division for a city where the sights are outdoors and the eating is on a terrace. November drops to 22.4C by day and 8.3C at night, with the rain climbing back to 34.3 mm over 4.9 days.

September is the month people get wrong in the other direction. Its mean daily high is 31.4C, which is still a summer figure, and the break in the heat happens inside the month rather than at the start of it. A trip in the first ten days of September is a summer trip; the last ten days are autumn.

The one November date that fills the city

The Marrakech International Film Festival ran 20 to 28 November in 2026, according to the Centre Cinematographique Marocain, the Moroccan state film body. Dates for the following edition are not published. It is a genuine crowd event, with screenings on Jemaa el-Fna itself, and it moves hotel prices in a way nothing else in the autumn does.

Nothing else in October or November competes with it. The 55th Festival National des Arts Populaires ran in early July, and no dates beyond that edition are published; the Marrakech du Rire comedy festival has published no edition since 2022 and its own site is unreachable, so this guide does not print a date for it.

What thins out and what does not

The tour calendars loosen in November and the day trips run with spare seats, which is the month for the longer Atlas and five-valleys itineraries. The monuments do not thin out in any way you can measure: the Ministry publishes no visitor numbers, and it admits Moroccan nationals free on Fridays year-round, which keeps Friday busy in every season. That rule belongs to the Friday and holiday openings page.

December averages a daily high of 19.1C, January 18.1C and February 19.9C, which is a comfortable afternoon in a shirt. The overnight means are 5.1C, 3.8C and 5.2C. That spread, over fourteen degrees between the afternoon and the small hours in January, is the fact to plan around.

A riad is a courtyard house with the rooms opening onto open air. It is unheated by default, the walls are thick and cold, and a room facing north across a courtyard in January can be genuinely uncomfortable at seven in the morning. The question to ask before booking, and it is worth asking directly, is whether the room has heating rather than whether the riad does. Where to stay covers the district choice; the heating question is the winter-specific one.

What winter buys you

Space, and light. The monuments are at their emptiest, the queue at the Jardin Majorelle is at its shortest, and the low sun through the Ben Youssef courtyard is the best photographic light of the year. Rainfall stays modest at 29.6 mm in December, 34.5 mm in January and 31.8 mm in February, about five rain days each.

Prices move, though not on tickets: Ministry admission is $10.65 (100 MAD) for a foreign adult in every month, with no seasonal reduction. What moves is accommodation. Nobody official publishes a Marrakech hotel rate index, so this guide prints no percentage and gives only the direction.

The January date that closes streets

The Marrakech Marathon is on Sunday 31 January 2027, the 37th edition. The marathon starts at 07:45 and the half at 09:15, both from Place de la Koutoubia, with bib collection on the two preceding days at the same place. The organiser claims more than 15,000 runners.

It is a single Sunday morning and the course runs through the centre and out along the Palmeraie road. If your one full day in the city is that Sunday, plan the morning on foot inside the medina and leave anything involving a taxi across town until the afternoon. Getting around covers the normal position; the marathon is the one predictable exception to it.

Ramadan next begins in February 2027. The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office states that the dates vary by year and country, next starting in February 2027. Global Affairs Canada is more specific and says that in 2027 the lunar month of Ramadan is expected to begin on or around 7 February. Neither is a fixed date, and neither claims to be.

The reason is procedural rather than astronomical. In Morocco the start is confirmed by physical observation of the crescent on the evening of the 29th of the preceding month and announced by the Ministere des Habous et des Affaires Islamiques, which means the country learns the date roughly one day ahead. Government portals publish Hijri dates and do not publish a forward Gregorian equivalent. Any month-in-advance date you find, including the one above, is an estimate.

What actually changes

Two venues publish shortened Ramadan hours outright, the only hard, citable Ramadan facts in the ticket layer. The Ben Youssef Madrasa runs 09:00 to 16:30 instead of 09:00 to 19:00, and Le Jardin Secret 09:30 to 16:30. The Ministry monuments publish no Ramadan variation, which is not the same as promising there will be none.

Restaurant hours change, and the hour before sunset is the quietest the souks get all year because everyone who works in them has gone home to eat. The hour after sunset is the opposite. The FCDO's wording on conduct is that eating or drinking, swearing, smoking or chewing gum in public in the daytime may cause offence, and what to wear sets out how far that reaches a non-Muslim visitor, which is less far than most blogs imply.

The rest of the calendar

Morocco has 17 paid public holidays, ten on fixed dates and four moving with the lunar calendar. One correction worth carrying, because commercial calendars repeat it: 31 October is not on the ministry's own list. They matter here for one reason.

The Ministry of Culture ticket pages state that entry is free for Moroccans every Friday and on the first days of national and religious holidays, so those are the days the four monuments are fullest and a foreign visitor still pays $10.65 (100 MAD).

The annual total is 269.6 mm across 48.1 rain days on the thirty-year mean, where a rain day is any day with at least a millimetre. Nearly all of it falls between November and April. July has 2.7 mm across 1.1 rain days, which is as close to a guarantee as a climate series gives.

The practical reading is that a March or November trip should hold one indoor option in reserve rather than reorganising around a forecast, and that the reserve options here are thin, because most Marrakech sights are open courtyards. The genuinely covered ones are the Maison de la Photographie, Dar Si Said, the souk lanes under their reed roofs, and a hammam.

The rain that is not in the city figures

The day trips carry a different risk profile from the city, and it is not the millimetres. The Ourika valley sits in a mountain catchment with a recorded flood history, and mountain rainfall is not what the city gauge measures. A wet day in the High Atlas can close a valley road while the medina stays dry, which is why an Ourika or Atlas booking in the wet half of the year deserves a free-cancellation option and a look at the operator's own weather policy before the deposit.

Snow closes the Tizi n'Tichka pass to Ait Ben Haddou occasionally in winter, and the operators reroute or cancel rather than run it. Nothing in the city is affected.

FIFA appointed Morocco, Portugal and Spain as hosts of the 2030 World Cup by a vote of all 211 member associations at an Extraordinary Congress in December 2024, and Marrakech is one of Morocco's six host cities, alongside Agadir, Casablanca, Fez, Rabat and Tangier. The Grand Stade de Marrakech goes from about 41,000 seats to 46,000: phase one of the rebuild took the turnstiles from 36 to 77, and phase two completes at the end of 2028, removing the athletics track and roofing the bowl. Match dates for Marrakech are not stated.

The city has already run the rehearsal, hosting eight Africa Cup of Nations matches at the Grand Stade including a quarter-final. Nothing about it touched the monuments or their hours. What it moved was room availability on specific nights, which is the only mechanism by which a football calendar reaches a visitor here. For a trip in the next two years, check your dates against a fixture list before booking a room and otherwise ignore it. For 2030 itself, assume the city is full.