Portugal Weather by Month (2026 Data)

Mainland Portugal fits in one line of latitude span, yet its January nights range from subtropical Faro to a frost-prone interior - and its official normals say so in hard numbers. This page counts the country's weather the way its national meteorological service does: month by month, station by station, from IPMA's 1991-2020 climate normals for eight stations, from the Algarve to Tras-os-Montes and out to Madeira and the Azores¹.

Everything here is checked against the source: the tables, the charts and every number in the text come from IPMA's own fichas, from its official extremes list, or - where no official service publishes monthly data - from a labelled satellite aggregator. The Fahrenheit tables are ours, converted from the originals².

Portugal weather by month: the one-minute answer

The Portugal temperature by month, in one sweep: winter days run in the mid-50s to low-60s Fahrenheit (12-17 C highs) almost everywhere, summer days reach the high 80s to low 90s F (31-34 C in the interior, 25-29 C on the coasts), and nights stay mild except in the north-east interior, where January lows average around freezing¹. The chart above shows Lisbon's three curves - daytime highs, night lows and the mean - and the shape they make is the shape of the whole country: a gentle winter trough and a long, flat summer plateau that runs from June well into September.

The Portugal average temperature by month, taken across our eight stations, sits near 10-12 C (50-54 F) in January, crosses 15-18 C (59-64 F) in April, and spends July and August between 19.9 and 24.7 C (68-76 F) as a monthly mean¹. What changes from station to station is not the shape of the year but its intensity: the interior swings hardest, the islands barely swing at all.

Weather in Portugal by month is therefore less about four seasons and more about two: a green, changeable half from October to March, and a dry, rock-steady half from April to September. The tables in the city sections below give every number; the sections after that explain the differences - and the Fahrenheit table converts it all².

Portugal climate by month: three zones, two coasts, one archipelago effect

The year runs through three different climates on the same calendar. Koppen's map gives most of the land south of the Tagus and the inland Douro Valley a hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Csa); the north of the Tagus and the southwest coast get the milder warm-summer version (Csb); and a small pocket of inland Alentejo is dry enough to count as cold semi-arid (BSk). The Azores sit in their own humid-subtropical class (Cfa)³.

The Portugal seasons by month follow the Atlantic more than the Mediterranean in the north, and the Mediterranean more than the Atlantic in the south. The clearest way to see it is the continentality chart below: Braganca's mean temperature swings 17.2 C between July and January, Lisbon's swings 12.0 C, and Ponta Delgada in the Azores just 6.7 C². The same geography explains the frost record: Braganca averages 53.4 frost days a year, Lisbon 0.1 and Faro zero - in an average year the Algarve simply does not freeze¹.

The annual summary table collects all eight stations: annual means from 12.9 C (Braganca) to 18.2 C (Faro) on the mainland, 20.0 C in Funchal, and the January and July means that drive every packing decision a traveller makes¹. Read the two columns together and the strategy writes itself: the July column says where to book for heat, the January column says where to escape to in winter, and the annual mean says how big the swing between the two will feel where you are standing².

Weather by month, city by city

Lisbon, Portugal: weather by month

The capital is the reference point most visitors start from, and the capital's monthly pattern is the gentlest of the mainland cities: August highs of 29.0 C (84.2 F), January highs of 14.4 C (57.9 F), and a monthly mean that never drops below 11.1 C (52 F)¹. Lisbon's Lisbon, Portugal average temperature by month also shows the famous shoulder-season sweet spots: May (18.4 C mean, 64.3 F) and late September (22.1 C mean, 71.8 F) pair summer warmth with pre-heat-wave crowds¹. Frost is a non-event here - 0.1 days a year - and the 1991-2020 window's hottest spell touched 44.0 C (111.2 F) exactly once, on 4 August 2018¹.

Faro, Portugal: weather by month - the Algarve benchmark

The Algarve, Portugal weather by month story is the winter-warmth story: Faro's January mean of 12.3 C (54.1 F) beats Lisbon's by 1.2 C and Porto's by 2.1 C, and its December and March means out-warm every other mainland station's¹. The Algarve benchmark peaks with 29.4 C (84.9 F) July highs and a sea warm enough to swim from May to October. Two caveats keep it honest: Faro's normal is a hybrid series (IPMA flags it), and the region's summer heat now regularly brushes 40 C (104 F) - the 1991-2020 window recorded 44.3 C (111.7 F) once, in July 2004¹.

Portugal weather by month, Fahrenheit

If you think in Fahrenheit, the conversion is a fixed formula - multiply the Celsius value by 1.8 and add 32 - so nothing is lost in translation, and the table below does it for the capital. The Lisbon, Portugal weather by month Fahrenheit picture reads like this: highs from 57.9 F in January to 84.2 F in August, lows from 46.0 F to 65.3 F, and an annual mean of 63.1 F². For the other stations, convert any number from the tables above with the same formula; 25 C is 77 F, 30 C is 86 F, 35 C is 95 F².

Portugal water temperature by month: the Atlantic reality

Water is where Portugal stops being Mediterranean: the Atlantic cold current keeps the west coast braces-cold even in August. The Portugal sea temperature by month ranges from 13.8 C (56.8 F) off Porto in February to 21.7 C (71.1 F) off Faro in August - and the Algarve's corner of the coast is consistently 2-4 C warmer than the west-facing shores⁴. September beats June everywhere: the ocean lags the air by about two months, so the warmest swimming water arrives after the crowds leave.

One honesty note: IPMA publishes operational sea-temperature forecasts but no official monthly normals table, so these figures come from a labelled satellite-data aggregator (NOAA and Copernicus Marine inputs) rather than the national service - good enough for packing decisions, cited as such⁴.

Two month-by-month questions this page deliberately does not answer with tables: humidity and the UV index. IPMA's station fichas do carry mean relative humidity, and Portugal's June-July UV index reaches very high levels in the south, but the published series sit scattered across per-station documents - so we prefer a missing table to a shaky one². Both belong on a follow-up page rather than in a footnote.

What the monthly tables do settle is comfort. Winter humidity along the northern coast makes Porto's 8 C lows feel damper than the number suggests, while Lisbon's Atlantic breeze keeps even the warmest nights (18.5 C in August, 65.3 F) sleepable without air conditioning - one reason the capital sells rooftop beds rather than chilled rooms¹.

The islands: Portugal's two weather outliers

Madeira, Portugal: weather by month (Funchal)

Madeira's line is near-flat, and Funchal's normals prove it: monthly means from 16.8 C (62.2 F) in February to 23.7 C (74.7 F) in August, an annual mean of 20.0 C (68 F) - warmer than any mainland station in every single month of winter¹. Madeira's trade-off is terrain: the island stacks a subtropical coast and a cool mountain top into a few kilometres, so the ficha describes the coast, not the peaks.

The Azores, Portugal: weather by month (Ponta Delgada)

Ponta Delgada's line sits between Lisbon's and Funchal's: Ponta Delgada runs 11.7-21.2 C (53.1-70.2 F) across the year with a 18.2 C (64.8 F) annual mean, and the smallest seasonal swing of the whole set (6.7 C)¹. The price of that stability is changeability - Atlantic systems cross the islands in every month, which is why the Azores records (+32.2 C, -3.5 C) look tame next to the mainland's 47.3 and -16.0⁵.

Records and the warming signal

Portugal's all-time extremes are bigger than most visitors expect. The official record high is 47.3 C (117.1 F) at Amareleja in the Alentejo interior, set on 1 August 2003; the record low is -16.0 C (3.2 F) at Penhas da Saude in the Serra da Estrela, reached twice, in February 1954 and February 1956⁵. The same official list holds the strange ones: a night that never cooled below 32.0 C (89.6 F) in Faro, and a July day so cold the high was -10.2 C (13.6 F) in the mountains⁵.

The trend behind the normals is upward. Since the 1970s Portugal has warmed at about 0.3 C per decade in every region; 2025 came in at 16.47 C, +0.81 C above the 1991-2020 normal and fifth warmest since 1931 - behind 2022, 2023, 1997 and 2024, so four of the five warmest years are the last four⁶. Official scenarios put mainland Portugal about +2 C (moderate) to +4 C (high) warmer by 2100, with the islands projected between +2.3 and +4.9 C⁷. The hottest single month ever measured on the mainland - July 2022, a 25.14 C monthly mean - is what that trajectory looks like in practice⁶.

For the numbers on this page the implication is simple and worth stating: the 1991-2020 normals are the official baseline, but each new decade is running warmer than the last, so treat the tables as a floor for future summers rather than a ceiling².

Best time to visit Portugal, weather by month

Read the question off the tables above and three answers fall out. For beach weather, August wins on paper - 29.0 C Lisbon highs, 21.7 C Faro sea - but June and September deliver 90% of the warmth with cooler nights and none of the peak-heat risk¹. For city trips, May and October are the mean-temperature sweet spots: Lisbon's 18.4 C and 18.7 C means make walking distances easy without the August scorcher¹. For escaping winter entirely, the Algarve and Madeira are the only choices: Faro's January mean of 12.3 C (54.1 F) and Funchal's 16.8-17.1 C (62-63 F) winter means are the warmest air Portugal sells in the low season¹.

The numbers also explain what to pack by month rather than by country: a real coat for Braganca-grade interior winters (January highs 9.1 C, 53 frost days a year), nothing heavier than a jumper for coastal winters, and air conditioning as a default choice for inland July-August nights, which in Evora and Castelo Branco stay around 16-18 C (61-64 F) but follow 33 C (91 F) days¹.

Conclusions

1. Portugal weather by month is a two-season story: a mild, changeable October-March half and a dry, stable April-September half, with the annual mean at 15.66 C (60.2 F) on the mainland⁶.
2. The north-south gap is real but modest - Faro's annual mean (18.2 C) is only 5.3 C warmer than Braganca's (12.9 C) - while the interior-to-coast gap in seasonal swing reaches 17.2 C vs 12.0 C².
3. The islands beat the mainland in winter: Funchal's 20.0 C annual mean and 16.8 C coldest month make Madeira the only part of Portugal where winter means never leave the low 60s F¹.
4. The extremes are official and violent: 47.3 C at Amareleja, -16.0 C at Penhas da Saude, a 32.0 C warm night in Faro - three numbers that kill any one-climate description of the country⁵.
5. Every future decade runs warmer: +0.3 C per decade already observed, +2 to +4 C projected by 2100, so the 1991-2020 tables here are best read as a floor for coming summers⁶.

Microclimate matters within a single month as much as the monthly averages differ between months. Coastal neighbourhoods sit several degrees cooler than eastern ones on summer afternoons because of the Atlantic breeze, and the Douro valley inland runs hotter than any city figure suggests. Travellers sensitive to heat should treat the sea-temperature column as seriously as the air-temperature one: the ocean along the northern coast rarely exceeds 18 degrees even in August, which surprises visitors accustomed to the Mediterranean.