A walled colonial port on the Caribbean, with rainforest running down to the sea an hour east. Colombia's caribbean coast barely has a temperature season: daytime highs move only about 1 °C across the whole year, from 26 °C in November to 27 °C in March. What changes instead is rain.
Measured against a beach trip, the conditions hold up January to March. January is the most consistent single month: highs near 27 °C, nights around 23 °C, and roughly 28 mm of rain across the month.
The binding constraint here is rainfall — that is what rules months out, not any composite judgement. Rainfall is sharply seasonal: October averages 324 mm against 22 mm in February, so the wet season is the real planning constraint rather than heat or cold. April is the weakest month on these criteria.
December sit just outside the window — part of the month works and part does not. These are usually the interesting weeks: conditions are close to the peak-season answer while prices and crowds are not. The map lets you check them fortnight by fortnight rather than trusting a monthly average.
What Colombia's Caribbean coast is known for
- Cartagena's walled city and fortress of San Felipe are a UNESCO World Heritage site
- Tayrona National Park has jungle-backed beaches; parts close annually for indigenous restoration periods
- The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta rises to 5,700 m within 42 km of the coast — the highest coastal range on Earth
- The Lost City trek, four to five days through the Sierra, reaches a site older than Machu Picchu
- Barranquilla's Carnival is second in scale in the Americas only to Rio's
Month by month
| Month | High °C | Low °C | Precip mm | Wet days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 27 | 23 | 28 | 5.4 |
| February | 27 | 23 | 22 | 4.9 |
| March | 27 | 23 | 43 | 8.5 |
| April | 27 | 23 | 113 | 15.6 |
| May | 27 | 23 | 227 | 24.3 |
| June | 27 | 24 | 262 | 25.6 |
| July | 27 | 24 | 224 | 24.7 |
| August | 27 | 24 | 220 | 26.7 |
| September | 27 | 23 | 286 | 27.5 |
| October | 27 | 23 | 324 | 28.7 |
| November | 26 | 23 | 216 | 24.0 |
| December | 26 | 23 | 91 | 13.1 |
Ticked rows are months where every hard requirement for a beach trip is met across at least half the month.
By trip type
| Beach | January to March |
| City | December to January |
Each row applies that trip type's own hard limits to the same climate data.
Open Cartagena & Colombia's Coast on the map →
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Nearby regions
Figures are 30-year climatology sampled at Cartagena, Santa Marta, Tayrona, Barranquilla and Minca, averaged across those locations, from ERA5-Land reanalysis fitted with a harmonic seasonal cycle and a trend term, evaluated for 2026. Sampling named towns rather than averaging the whole region avoids blending valley and mountain conditions into a figure true of neither. Cells are about 0.08° wide, from ERA5-Land's 0.1° grid, which is itself driven by a 0.25° (~28 km) atmospheric reanalysis — so individual valleys, sheltered bays and single summits are not resolved. In steep terrain read these as conditions for the wider area rather than for one village. They describe typical conditions, not a forecast. Read how the climatology is built.