A Swahili trading town and white-sand east coast, with two rainy seasons rather than one. Zanzibar barely has a temperature season: daytime highs move only about 3 °C across the whole year, from 27 °C in July to 30 °C in February. What changes instead is rain.
Measured against a beach trip, the conditions hold up January to February and July to October. January is the most consistent single month: highs near 30 °C, nights around 26 °C, and roughly 36 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: April averages 242 mm against 30 mm in July, so the wet season is the real planning constraint rather than heat or cold. March is the weakest month on these criteria.
June 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.
Month by month
| Month | High °C | Low °C | Precip mm | Wet days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 30 | 26 | 36 | 11.2 |
| February | 30 | 26 | 36 | 9.3 |
| March | 30 | 26 | 158 | 21.7 |
| April | 28 | 25 | 242 | 27.5 |
| May | 27 | 25 | 195 | 24.2 |
| June | 27 | 24 | 73 | 19.4 |
| July | 27 | 23 | 30 | 16.3 |
| August | 27 | 23 | 41 | 13.4 |
| September | 28 | 23 | 40 | 10.9 |
| October | 28 | 24 | 59 | 14.8 |
| November | 29 | 25 | 102 | 21.2 |
| December | 29 | 26 | 106 | 21.9 |
Ticked rows are months where every hard requirement for a beach trip is met across at least half the month.
Open Zanzibar on the map →Nearby regions
Figures are 30-year climatology sampled at Stone Town, Nungwi, Paje, Kendwa and Jambiani, 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.