Santorini, Naxos, Paros and the rest — whitewashed, treeless and famously windy. Daytime highs in the Cyclades run from about 14 °C in January to 26 °C in July, an annual range of roughly 13 °C.
Measured against a beach trip, the conditions hold up June to September. July is the most consistent single month: highs near 26 °C, nights around 24 °C, and roughly 0 mm of rain across the month.
What rules months out here is temperature and rainfall, not any composite judgement. Rainfall is sharply seasonal: January averages 85 mm against 0 mm in July, so the wet season is the real planning constraint rather than heat or cold. January is the weakest month on these criteria.
Visitor numbers follow their own curve. Recorded overnight stays peak in the two weeks from 30 July at about 2.5 times an average fortnight for this region, against under 0.1 times in January. July, the most consistent month on the weather, is also near the top of that curve at 2.5 times average, so the two answers pull against each other. On the separate question of how much tourism the area carries all year, Fira, Santorini sits in the densest of 294 European regions, at 126.9 overnight stays per resident a year.
October sits 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. On recorded overnight stays that holds: October runs about 60% below the August peak. The map lets you check them fortnight by fortnight rather than trusting a monthly average.
What the Cyclades is known for
- Santorini's caldera is the rim of a Bronze Age eruption that buried the town of Akrotiri
- Delos, uninhabited and entirely archaeological, was one of the most sacred sites in the Greek world
- The meltemi wind blows hard through high summer, which is why these islands are a windsurfing centre
- Naxos has the highest peak in the Cyclades and mountain villages that feel unrelated to the beach resorts
Month by month
| Month | High °C | Low °C | Precip mm | Wet days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 14 | 11 | 85 | 12.6 |
| February | 14 | 11 | 66 | 10.4 |
| March | 15 | 12 | 45 | 7.7 |
| April | 17 | 14 | 21 | 3.7 |
| May | 20 | 17 | 9 | 1.7 |
| June | 24 | 21 | 2 | 0.6 |
| July | 26 | 24 | 0 | 0.1 |
| August | 26 | 24 | 1 | 0.2 |
| September | 24 | 22 | 8 | 1.2 |
| October | 21 | 19 | 24 | 3.8 |
| November | 18 | 16 | 48 | 6.9 |
| December | 15 | 13 | 78 | 11.8 |
Ticked rows are months where every hard requirement for a beach trip is met across at least half the month.
Open Cyclades on the map →
Nearby regions
Figures are 30-year climatology sampled at Fira, Santorini, Naxos, Paros, Mykonos and Milos, 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.