Gibraltar Weather: Month by Month Climate Guide 2026

21 April 2026 Last checked 2026-04-21

Gibraltar's climate in real numbers: 740.8 mm of rain a year, 2,676 hours of sun, the month that catches guests out, and the wind that decides your day.

Rain has been measured on this Rock since 1790, when the Royal Engineers began keeping the record, and 236 years of it reduce to two numbers. December averages 150.7 millimetres of rain. July averages 0.7. Everything else about Gibraltar's weather is detail hung on that contrast.

What follows is the month by month picture, the two winds that decide what any given day looks like, the sea temperatures that matter if you intend to swim, and the one month that genuinely catches guests out. Where a figure cannot be sourced properly, this post says so rather than rounding it into something that looks confident.

The table that answers most of it

These are the 1991 to 2020 climate normals for the Gibraltar International Airport station, the longest consistent run of published figures for the territory. The Gibraltar Meteorological Office keeps the official record and takes hourly observations of temperature, wind, visibility, cloud, sunshine, rainfall and pressure, but it does not publish its normals as an open table, so the numbers below come from the airport station normals. If you need certified figures for a contract or an insurance claim, request them from the Met Office directly through the Government of Gibraltar weather service, which also runs a duty forecaster line.

Across the year that averages out at a daily high of 21.7C, a daily low of 15.8C, 740.8 millimetres of rain spread over 56 wet days, and 2,676 hours of sunshine. The hottest temperature ever recorded here was 40.6C on 5 July 1994. The coldest was exactly 0.0C on 13 January 1978, which means the record holds no sub zero reading at all.

Two independent sources agree, which is worth knowing because Gibraltar weather pages tend to copy each other. The Government of Gibraltar puts the mean August temperature at 24.3C and the mean January temperature at 13.5C. Work the same means out of the airport normals and you get 24.8C and 13.75C. Half a degree apart on a thirty year average is agreement, not conflict.

December is the month that catches guests out

Guests arriving in December expect mild, and mild is correct: the average high is 17.0C and the average low 12.4C, which beats most of Europe. What they do not expect is 150.7 millimetres of rain, the wettest month of the Gibraltar year by a margin of 50 millimetres over second placed November. The trap is not the total. It is the distribution.

That 150.7 millimetres falls across an average of 7.9 days. Do the division and a wet December day in Gibraltar delivers around 19 millimetres, which is a proper soaking rather than drizzle. The pattern is a day of heavy rain, then three clear ones. The Government of Gibraltar classes roughly 30 per cent of winter days as wet, so the odds on any single day are in your favour, but a four night December stay has a realistic chance of losing one afternoon entirely. Pack a waterproof and a plan B, and stop worrying about it.

The two winds, and why they decide your day

Most Mediterranean destinations have one prevailing wind. Gibraltar has two, and they produce completely different days from the same forecast temperature.

The Levanter is a warm, humid easterly that funnels through the Strait. SKYbrary classes it as a mountain gap wind, strongest when pressure is higher over the Mediterranean than over the Atlantic. The air arrives moist but unsaturated, gets forced up over a 426 metre limestone ridge, condenses at the top and streams west off the summit as a lens shaped banner cloud. It needs a stable cap above it to form, which is why some easterly days produce a spectacular cloud and others produce nothing at all.

Here is the part that actually changes your plans. The banner sits over the eastern side of the peninsula and leaves the west clear. All three sandy beaches are on the east. So a grey, clammy morning at Catalan Bay can be a bright one at the marina ten minutes away, and the right move on a Levanter morning is to walk west rather than write the day off. The full mechanics of the Levanter cloud are worth reading if you want to predict it.

The Poniente is the opposite: a cooler westerly off the Atlantic. Poniente days are the clearest of the year, the summit is visible, and the air feels dry rather than close. If you have one day to go up the Rock, spend it on a Poniente.

What nobody publishes is how many Levanter days a year Gibraltar gets. The Met Office holds the daily wind record and will analyse it on request, but no open dataset gives a count, so any website telling you the Levanter blows a specific number of days is guessing. Check the wind direction on the morning instead.

Summer here is cooler than inland Spain, and that is the whole appeal

August is the hottest month at an average high of 28.4C, and July is barely behind at 28.1C. That is warm rather than punishing, because there is sea on three sides and a ridge in the middle. Inland Andalusia runs several degrees hotter through August, and Seville is the usual comparison, though AEMET publishes those normals station by station and this post is not going to invent a figure for it. The honest version: if 36C is too hot for you and 28C is not, the coast is the answer.

Summer rain is effectively nil. June, July and August between them average 10.3 millimetres, which is one shower across three months. Sunshine peaks at 326 hours in July, and the Government of Gibraltar puts the summer average at about 10.5 hours of sun a day. The flipside is UV. Gibraltar sits at 36 degrees north, further south than Seville or Athens, and the Upper Rock has almost no shade on it. Nobody publishes a UV index series for the territory, so take the latitude and the 326 hours of July sun as the warning and cover up.

Sea temperatures, and the real swimming window

Sea figures come from a different source than the airport station, so treat them as indicative rather than official. Monthly averages run 16.3C in January, 15.8C in February, 15.7C in March, 16.9C in April, 18.5C in May, 21.0C in June, 22.8C in July, 23.3C in August, 21.8C in September, 20.5C in October, 18.3C in November and 16.8C in December.

March is the coldest the water gets, not January, because the sea cools later than the air and keeps cooling after the air has turned. In practice July to early October is comfortable swimming for most people. June and late October are bracing but fine if you are used to British water. Anything from December to May is a plunge, and the people doing it at Camp Bay in February are locals who have built up to it.

The cable car is shut, so the weather matters more than it used to

The cable car made its last run in November 2025 and is being rebuilt completely, with new upper and lower stations and 80 passenger cabins replacing the 25 passenger ones installed in 1986. The Gibraltar Nature Reserve expects it back in 2027 and no operator has confirmed a month. Until then the ways up are on foot or by minibus taxi tour, and our guide to the cable car closure covers the alternatives.

This changes the weather calculation. A cabin ride took a few minutes and the weather barely mattered. Walking up takes 50 to 90 minutes with 400 metres of ascent on limestone, and the weather matters enormously. March to May and October to November are the months for it: 18C to 22C, dry enough, and the light is better. In July and August start before 09:00 or do not start. On a strong Levanter do not bother at all, because the summit will be inside the cloud and you will have climbed 400 metres for a view of grey.

741 millimetres of rain, and not a drop of it in your glass

Gibraltar collects three quarters of a metre of rain a year and drinks none of it. The old system caught it: catchments surfaced on the east face of the Rock from 1903, extended between 1911 and 1914 and again between 1958 and 1961, eventually covering around 243,000 square metres. The decision to discontinue them was taken in 1991 and they were dismantled afterwards. Gibraltar's Environmental Agency states that all potable water is now obtained by desalinating seawater, with a second public network pumping raw seawater for flushing and firefighting, and how that actually works is a better story than it sounds.

The record has teeth, too. A storm in 1776 killed 50 people here, which is the kind of event that gets left out of climate summaries built from monthly averages. Gibraltar's weather is mild on the mean and occasionally violent on the day.

What to pack, season by season

June to September: light clothing, swimwear, a hat and high factor sunscreen. No waterproof needed. Evenings stay around 21C so you will not want a jacket, though the Levanter can make an August night feel heavier than the number suggests.

March to May and October to November: layers, because 22C in the sun and 14C in the shade is the same afternoon. Short sleeves and a jumper, plus a light waterproof for October and November. This is the best window for anything involving walking.

December to February: a waterproof jacket and a jumper, trousers rather than shorts, proper shoes. Nothing heavier. Overnight lows average 11.2C in January, so a winter coat will sit in the wardrobe. Check the forecast on the Met Office page for Gibraltar or on Open Meteo before you pack, since a wet week and a dry one look nothing alike.

What we actually tell guests who ask

Running 100+ apartments here means fielding this question several hundred times a year, and the answer has settled. The best fortnight is the second half of May: 22.6C, 27 millimetres of rain across the whole month, 289 hours of sun, and the sea has reached 18.5C. October is the close second and is quieter. July and August are hot, busy and completely dry, which suits beach stays and punishes anyone planning to walk the ridge. December and January are the value months and the gamble: mild, bright more often than not, and capable of taking an afternoon off you.

Good walking shoes in every season, because Gibraltar is small and steep. And check which wind is blowing before you commit the day. For more on timing a trip, our month by month guide to visiting goes further on crowds and prices, and the flights and border piece covers getting here.

Victory Suites runs serviced apartments on Devils Tower Road, a few minutes from the airport and the frontier, bookable in GBP across 300+ booking channels. Every guest lands on a homepage showing exactly what the weather is doing outside the building right now, plus the week ahead, which is more use than any monthly average when you are deciding whether today is a Rock day or a Casemates day.