The best time to visit Cornwall

Britain's south-west tip — surf beaches, fishing harbours and the mildest winters in the country. Daytime highs in Cornwall run from about 9 °C in January to 19 °C in August, an annual range of roughly 10 °C.

Measured against a city trip, the conditions hold up June to September. June is the most consistent single month: highs near 17 °C, nights around 12 °C, and roughly 69 mm of rain across the month.

What rules months out here is temperature, not any composite judgement. January is the weakest month on these criteria.

May and October sit just outside the window, with part of the month working and part 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 Cornwall is known for

St Michael's Mount is a tidal island castle reached on foot at low water
The Eden Project's biomes sit in a former china clay pit
The South West Coast Path runs 1,014 km, with the finest sections around the Lizard and Land's End
Cornwall has Britain's most reliable surf, centred on Newquay's Fistral beach

Month by month

Month	High °C	Low °C	Precip mm	Wet days
January	9	5	92	15.8
February	9	5	74	13.9
March	10	6	72	13.7
April	12	7	64	13.1
May	15	9	67	13.7
June	17	12	69	13.1
July	19	14	69	13.0
August	19	14	66	14.2
September	17	13	72	11.4
October	15	11	93	15.8
November	12	8	103	17.2
December	10	6	108	16.9

Ticked rows are months where every hard requirement for a city trip is met across at least half the month.

Open Cornwall on the map →

Penzance, Cornwall © Simon Cobb, CC0 · cropped and resized · Wikimedia Commons

Golowan 2017 3 © cornishlens.co.uk, CC BY 2.0 · cropped and resized · Wikimedia Commons

Nearby regions

Figures are 30-year climatology sampled at Newquay, St Ives, Falmouth, Penzance and Padstow, 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.