The best time to visit Cusco & Machu Picchu

The Inca heartland at high altitude, where the year splits cleanly into a dry season and a wet one. Cusco and the sacred valley barely has a temperature season: daytime highs move only about 1 °C across the whole year, from 12 °C in June to 14 °C in November. What changes instead is rain.

Measured against a hiking trip, the conditions hold up May to September. May is the most consistent single month: highs near 12 °C, nights around 4 °C, and roughly 57 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: January averages 261 mm against 30 mm in June, so the wet season is the real planning constraint rather than heat or cold. January is the weakest month on these criteria.

April 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 Cusco and the Sacred Valley is known for

Machu Picchu is reached by train from Ollantaytambo or on the four-day Inca Trail, which requires a permit booked months out
Cusco sits at roughly 3,400 m; the Sacred Valley is 600 m lower and much easier to acclimatise in
Inca stonework at Sacsayhuaman and Ollantaytambo fits without mortar and has outlasted the colonial buildings above it
Rainbow Mountain and Humantay Lake are both above 4,500 m — day trips, but serious ones
Inti Raymi in late June fills Cusco; it is the largest festival in the Andes

Month by month

Month	High °C	Low °C	Precip mm	Wet days
January	13	6	261	30.6
February	13	6	239	27.8
March	13	6	208	30.1
April	12	5	119	25.0
May	12	4	57	16.3
June	12	3	30	9.0
July	12	3	33	9.4
August	13	3	49	14.5
September	13	4	78	21.9
October	14	5	126	27.6
November	14	6	168	27.6
December	13	6	229	29.9

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

By trip type

Hiking	May to September
City	no month clears every limit

Each row applies that trip type's own hard limits to the same climate data.

Open Cusco & Machu Picchu on the map →

The valleys of the Urubamba and Patakancha rivers along Ollantaytambo are covered by an extensive set of agric © Jorge Láscar from Australia, CC BY 2.0 · cropped and resized · Wikimedia Commons

Peru - Sacred Valley & Incan Ruins 164 - Urubamba fiesta procession © McKay Savage from London, UK, CC BY 2.0 · cropped and resized · Wikimedia Commons

Nearby regions

Figures are 30-year climatology sampled at Cusco, Urubamba, Ollantaytambo, Pisac and Chinchero, 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.