Highland colonial city and Zapotec ruins, with a Pacific surf coast three hours down the mountains. Oaxaca barely has a temperature season: daytime highs move only about 5 °C across the whole year, from 24 °C in October to 29 °C in April. What changes instead is rain.
Measured against a city trip, the conditions hold up November to February. January is the most consistent single month: highs near 25 °C, nights around 14 °C, and roughly 22 mm of rain across the month.
The binding constraint here is rainfall and temperature — that is what rules months out, not any composite judgement. Rainfall is sharply seasonal: September averages 314 mm against 1 mm in December, so the wet season is the real planning constraint rather than heat or cold. March is the weakest month on these criteria.
What Oaxaca is known for
- Monte Alban, the Zapotec capital, sits on a levelled hilltop above the city and is a UNESCO site
- Oaxaca is the centre of Mexican mezcal production and of some of the country's most distinctive cooking
- Day of the Dead here is among the most elaborate anywhere, concentrated around Xoxocotlan's cemeteries
- Hierve el Agua's petrified mineral 'waterfalls' overlook the valley from about 1,800 m
- Puerto Escondido's Zicatela beach has a heavy, expert-only shore break
Month by month
| Month | High °C | Low °C | Precip mm | Wet days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 25 | 14 | 22 | 2.2 |
| February | 26 | 14 | 29 | 2.3 |
| March | 28 | 15 | 2 | 4.0 |
| April | 29 | 17 | 33 | 7.0 |
| May | 28 | 18 | 160 | 15.4 |
| June | 26 | 18 | 232 | 23.5 |
| July | 25 | 17 | 237 | 23.5 |
| August | 25 | 17 | 273 | 24.6 |
| September | 25 | 17 | 314 | 24.8 |
| October | 24 | 17 | 249 | 18.7 |
| November | 24 | 15 | 70 | 7.8 |
| December | 25 | 14 | 1 | 3.1 |
Ticked rows are months where every hard requirement for a city trip is met across at least half the month.
By trip type
| City | November to February |
| Beach | December to April |
Each row applies that trip type's own hard limits to the same climate data.
Open Oaxaca on the map →
Nearby regions
Figures are 30-year climatology sampled at Oaxaca de Juarez, Monte Alban, Mitla, Puerto Escondido and Huatulco, 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.