Limestone karst islands in the Sulu Sea, repeatedly voted among the world's best island destinations. Palawan barely has a temperature season: daytime highs move only about 2 °C across the whole year, from 27 °C in January to 30 °C in April. What changes instead is rain.
Measured against a beach trip, the conditions hold up March. March is the most consistent single month: highs near 29 °C, nights around 25 °C, and roughly 59 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: July averages 332 mm against 59 mm in March, 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 Palawan is known for
- El Nido and Bacuit Bay are the classic island-hopping base, with lagoons enclosed by vertical karst
- Coron's wrecks are among the best shallow WWII dive sites anywhere
- The Puerto Princesa Subterranean River, a UNESCO site, runs 8.2 km underground to the sea
- The Tubbataha Reefs are reachable only by liveaboard during a short calm-sea window
- The archipelago sits in the typhoon belt, though Palawan is hit less often than the eastern Philippines
Month by month
| Month | High °C | Low °C | Precip mm | Wet days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 27 | 25 | 103 | 14.0 |
| February | 28 | 25 | 69 | 10.2 |
| March | 29 | 25 | 59 | 11.2 |
| April | 30 | 26 | 88 | 14.4 |
| May | 29 | 26 | 190 | 24.6 |
| June | 29 | 26 | 285 | 27.2 |
| July | 28 | 25 | 332 | 27.9 |
| August | 28 | 25 | 319 | 26.3 |
| September | 28 | 25 | 299 | 27.2 |
| October | 28 | 25 | 290 | 27.9 |
| November | 28 | 25 | 224 | 23.7 |
| December | 28 | 25 | 160 | 20.7 |
Ticked rows are months where every hard requirement for a beach trip is met across at least half the month.
Open Palawan on the map →
Nearby regions
Figures are 30-year climatology sampled at Puerto Princesa, El Nido, Port Barton and Coron, 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.