September 12, 2026
Cartagena has one temperature and two seasons. The thermometer at the Rafael Núñez airport reads a high of 31 to 32 degrees and a low of 24 to 26 in every month of the year, by the 1991 to 2020 normals of IDEAM, Colombia’s weather service, so the question is never how hot it will be. The question is water: whether it falls from the sky, which it almost never does from December to April and does in earnest from May to November, and what the sea is doing, because the same trade winds that make the dry season bearable on the walls make the crossing to the Rosario Islands rough. We run nine tours in Cartagena, from a boat day on the islands to a food walk inside the walls, and this is the weather as we plan around it: the airport’s numbers month by month, the two seasons and the lighter month in the middle, the sea’s own calendar, the hurricane question with the honest answer, what El Niño means for the end of 2026, and the hours of the day we use.
The short version
By the airport’s normals the year brings 1,074 millimeters of rain on 70 days, a daily high of 31.7 degrees, a low of 25.4 and 6.9 hours of sun a day, with humidity between 79 and 83 percent in every month. December to April is the dry season: 67 millimeters in five months, and January, February and March together add up to four millimeters on less than one rainy day between them. May to November is the rainy season: 1,006 millimeters, 94 percent of the year, with June a lighter month between two wet halves and October the wettest month of all at 237 millimeters on 12 days. The dry season is also the windy season, when the trade winds blow from December to March and the sea is at its roughest; the rainy season is the calm sea. The sun sets between 5:36 and 6:28 all year, the heat is the same in every month, and the rule for the city is the same in every month too: walk early, rest at midday, come out again at four.
The two seasons, by the numbers
The table below is IDEAM’s 1991 to 2020 climatological normal for the Aeropuerto Rafael Núñez station, at two meters above sea level on the northern edge of the city: rain in millimeters, the average number of days with rain, the average daily high and low in degrees, and the hours of sunshine per day. Read it as two seasons and a hinge. From December to April the sky is closed: 45 millimeters in December as the rains finish, then 0.5 in January, 0.3 in February, 3 in March and 19 in April, on 0.1, 0.1, 0.4 and 2 days. A rainy day in January at this station is a once-in-ten-years event. From May to November the sky opens: 117 millimeters in May on 7 days, 93 in June, 121 in July, 128 in August, 133 in September, then the two heavy months, 237 in October on 12 days and 178 in November on 9, and the year closes with December’s 45. The hinge is June, when the rain eases for a few weeks between the first wet half and the second, a pause the coast calls the veranillo; at this station it is a dip of about a fifth from May, not a dry month, with 6.3 hours of sun a day against May’s 5.9, and the rainy season’s sunniest month is in fact July, at 6.8.
| Month | Rain | Days | High | Low | Sun |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 1 | 0 | 31.1 | 24.0 | 8.7 |
| February | 0 | 0 | 31.1 | 24.2 | 8.7 |
| March | 3 | 0 | 31.2 | 24.9 | 7.7 |
| April | 19 | 2 | 31.7 | 25.8 | 7.0 |
| May | 117 | 7 | 32.0 | 26.1 | 5.9 |
| June | 93 | 9 | 32.3 | 26.1 | 6.3 |
| July | 121 | 9 | 32.2 | 25.7 | 6.8 |
| August | 128 | 10 | 32.2 | 25.9 | 6.5 |
| September | 133 | 10 | 32.1 | 25.8 | 5.6 |
| October | 237 | 12 | 31.7 | 25.6 | 5.5 |
| November | 178 | 9 | 31.5 | 25.5 | 6.0 |
| December | 45 | 3 | 31.4 | 24.8 | 7.7 |
What the rainy season feels like is not what the totals suggest. October’s 237 millimeters fall on 12 days, so 18 or 19 days of the month are dry, and the rain that does come is a tropical storm of the afternoon or the night: a black sky over the bay, an hour or two of hard water that floods the low streets of Bocagrande, Manga and Getsemaní until the drains catch up, and an evening that is washed and a degree or two cooler. What you lose is a beach afternoon, not a day. The dry season feels like the opposite of its totals too: no rain for weeks, but a wind from the northeast that does not stop, and the salt it leaves on every railing and lens.
The heat, by the hour
Every month has the same heat, so it is the hour that matters. The high sits between 31.1 degrees in January and 32.3 in June, the low between 24.0 in January and 26.1 in May and June, and the relative humidity between 78.8 percent in February and 82.5 in November, which is why 31 degrees in Cartagena feels like more than 31 anywhere dry. The coolest nights of the year are December to February, when the low drops below 25 and the trade wind moves the air; the closest nights are May to September, at 26 with the wind gone. The sun is the other number: 8.7 hours a day in January and February, the sunniest months, falling to 5.5 in October, and at ten degrees north it passes straight overhead twice a year, in April and again in August. Sunrise moves only between 5:41 and 6:24 across the year and sunset between 5:36 in November and 6:28 in July, which is the hour the walls are built for and the hour our sunset boat is out on the bay. So the day we run in every month is the same: the walls, San Felipe and the plazas from seven to ten, the museums, the food walk and the courtyards from ten to four, a siesta in the middle of it, and the walls again from four until the light goes.
Month by month
January
0.5 millimeters on 0.1 days, a high of 31.1 and the year’s lowest low at 24.0, 8.7 hours of sun. The driest, sunniest, windiest month, with the sea at its roughest and the city at its fullest until the second week, when the holiday crowd leaves and the best weeks of the year begin. The trade wind is the reason the walls are pleasant at four in the afternoon.
February
0.3 millimeters on 0.1 days, high 31.1, low 24.2, 8.7 hours of sun and the year’s lowest humidity at 78.8 percent. The same weather as January with fewer people: the month we would choose for a first visit. The wind is still up and the island boats leave early to beat it; in the first days of February 2026 a cold front over the Caribbean brought a mar de leva that flooded the Avenida Santander with sand and stones, which is the dry season’s one bad habit.
March
3 millimeters on 0.4 days, high 31.2, low 24.9, 7.7 hours of sun. Still dry, a little hotter, the wind beginning to ease by the end of the month. Holy Week falls in March or April and fills every hotel and every beach; book the boat before you book the flight.
April
19 millimeters on 2 days, high 31.7, low 25.8, 7.0 hours of sun. The last dry month and the first month the sea lies down: the trade wind fades, the crossings to the islands turn smooth, the water clears for snorkeling, and the first storms of the year arrive at the end of the month as a warning of May.
May
117 millimeters on 7 days, high 32.0, low 26.1, 5.9 hours of sun. The rains begin properly, almost always in the afternoon or at night, and the sea is at its calmest. A good month for the islands if you leave at eight and are off the water by three, and a quiet one in the city.
June
93 millimeters on 9 days, the year’s highest high at 32.3, low 26.1, 6.3 hours of sun. The veranillo, the pause between the two wet halves: less rain than May or July and more sun than May, but the hottest afternoons of the year and, from the middle of the month, Colombia’s mid-year school holidays and the second high season of prices.
July
121 millimeters on 9 days, high 32.2, low 25.7, 6.8 hours of sun. Wet again but bright between the storms, and busy with Colombian families until the middle of the month; the second half of July and August are the best value of the rainy season. The sea stays calm.
August
128 millimeters on 10 days, high 32.2, low 25.9, 6.5 hours of sun. Storms most afternoons somewhere over the bay, mornings that are usually clear, calm water for the islands, and a city that is quiet on weekdays. The Atlantic hurricane season is building toward its September peak far to the north; here it means tropical waves that bring a day of rain and rough sea, which the port authority announces.
September
133 millimeters on 10 days, high 32.1, low 25.8, 5.6 hours of sun. The rain grows, the sky is grey more often, and the sea can turn rough for a day or two when a tropical wave passes: on September 7, 2026 the maritime authority warned of winds to 52 kilometers an hour and waves of two to three meters on this stretch of coast for the 9th. Low season, low prices and the emptiest hotels of the year.
October
237 millimeters on 12 days, high 31.7, low 25.6 and the year’s least sun at 5.5 hours. The wettest month by a distance, with 22 percent of the year’s rain in it; the storms are heavier and the low streets flood more often. We still run every tour, with a morning-first plan and a wet-afternoon plan for each day, and October is the month we are most likely to move a boat day by twenty-four hours.
November
178 millimeters on 9 days, high 31.5, low 25.5, 6.0 hours of sun and the year’s highest humidity at 82.5 percent. Still wet, and the month the city’s independence festivities fill the streets around November 11; the tail of the hurricane season, which in November 2020 sent the rains of Hurricane Iota over the city. By the last week the sky begins to close for the dry season.
December
45 millimeters on 3 days, high 31.4, low 24.8, 7.7 hours of sun. The dry season arrives, the trade wind returns, the nights ease to 24 or 25, cool by the standards of this coast, and from the second week the Christmas and New Year crowd arrives with it. The first half of December is one of the best fortnights of the year; the second half is the most expensive.
The sea has its own calendar
The rain says one thing and the sea says the opposite. From December to March the northeast trade winds blow along this coast at their strongest, and the maritime authority, DIMAR, issues notices of winds of 28 to 46 kilometers an hour and waves of two to three meters that name Bolívar with the other Caribbean departments; on the worst days the port authority holds the small boats in the marina and the crossing to the Rosario Islands does not happen. In the January wind season a cold front from the north can add to it and produce a mar de leva, the long swell that comes ashore over the seafront, which the city’s risk office calls characteristic of the season: in the first days of February 2026 the district counted close to 90 reports of blown roofs, damaged structures and high-tide flooding in 48 hours and cleaned seven and a half kilometers of the Avenida Santander of sand, stones and debris, and that month’s cold front, with waves over three meters, tore the decking off the new pier at Playa Blanca, which is in our beaches guide. This is why our island boat leaves early in the dry season, before the wind rises through the morning, and why a private boat, whose captain reads the day, is worth more from December to March than in any other month. From April to November the wind drops, the sea flattens and the water clears; the price of the calm is the afternoon storm, and the occasional tropical wave that puts the sea up for a day, as the DIMAR notice of September 7, 2026 did with waves of two to three meters on the central coast. The rule we give guests is simple: in the dry season the walls are the afternoon and the islands are the early morning; in the rainy season the islands are the whole morning and the afternoon is for the courtyards.
The rain is not the same everywhere in the district either. IDEAM’s normals for the Santa Ana station on Barú, at one meter above the sea and about 20 kilometers south of the city, give 1,016 millimeters on 47 days, so the beaches of Barú have fewer rainy days than the city; Bayunca, 35 meters up and inland to the northeast, gets 1,234 on 78 days; and the Escuela Naval station on the bay counts 68 rainy days and 7.1 hours of sun, a little more sun and a little less rain than the airport. None of it changes a plan, but it explains why a storm over the city can leave the islands dry, and the other way round.
The hurricane question, honestly
Cartagena lies at ten degrees north, along the southern edge of the Caribbean, and the Atlantic hurricane season, which the United States’ NOAA sets from June 1 to November 30 with its climatological peak in early September, passes mostly to the north of it. The storms that form off Africa and cross the Caribbean run toward Central America, the islands and the Gulf of Mexico; the Colombian territory that takes them head-on is the archipelago of San Andrés and Providencia, 700 kilometers to the northwest, not the mainland coast. What reaches Cartagena is the rain. On November 16, 2020 Hurricane Iota, a category 4 storm at its peak by the National Hurricane Center’s final report, passed Providencia and destroyed 98 percent of its infrastructure, and its rains over the mainland flooded about 70 percent of Cartagena, with floods and landslides that affected around 155,000 people, by the same report. That is the shape of the risk: not a landfall, for which we know of no case at Cartagena, but a November of extraordinary rain when a large storm passes far to the north. For 2026 NOAA’s August update predicts a below-normal season, seven to thirteen named storms with two to six hurricanes, against an average of fourteen and seven, and gives a 75 percent probability of a quiet year; by August 6 the season had produced two tropical storms and no hurricanes. We watch the National Hurricane Center’s map from August to November like everyone else on this coast, and a tropical wave on it means we move a boat day, not a trip.
El Niño and the end of 2026
The other thing to know about this year is El Niño. On September 10, 2026 IDEAM raised to 75 percent the probability that the event now under way becomes the most intense in 76 years, with a probability above 90 percent of a very strong event in the last quarter of 2026 and conditions persisting into the first quarter of 2027. For the Caribbean region IDEAM expects air temperatures above the climatological normals and a significant reduction in rainfall. For a Cartagena trip that means the October and November of 2026 are likely to be drier than the table above, the dry season that follows hotter, and the city’s water and heat advisories worth reading; it does not change the sea’s calendar, and it does not change the hours we keep.
When to come, by what you want
For the walls, the plazas and the food, come from the second week of January to the end of March: no rain, the trade wind in the afternoon, and, after the holiday crowd leaves, the best hotel rates of the dry season. For the islands and the water, come from April to early June or from mid-July to August: calm sea, clear water, storms that keep to the afternoon, and prices well below the winter. For the lowest prices of all, September and the first half of October, with the wettest skies and the emptiest beaches. Avoid, or book six months ahead for, the second half of December, the first week of January, Holy Week and the mid-June to mid-July school holidays, when the weather is fine and the city is full. The whole country’s calendar, city by city, is in our guide to the best time to visit Colombia, and the city itself, hour by hour, in our guide to things to do in Cartagena.
What we do differently, and what to pack
We build every Cartagena day around the heat and not the calendar: the walk starts at seven, the boat leaves at eight, lunch is long and shaded, and the walls come back at four. In the rainy season every day has a morning-first version and a wet-afternoon version, and our guides call the switch from the sky, not the forecast; in the dry season the boat leaves before the wind and the captain decides the route on the water. What we cannot promise is a dry afternoon in October or a flat sea in January; what we can promise is that the day is planned for the weather Cartagena actually has. Pack for 32 degrees and 80 percent humidity in every month: linen and cotton, a hat with a brim, sunscreen that you reapply, reef-safe for the islands, sandals that can get wet, a light rain layer from May to November, and repellent for the evenings in the rainy months, when the mosquitoes that carry dengue are most active, as our guide to whether Cartagena is safe explains. Nobody needs a sweater. The air conditioning in the restaurants is the coldest thing in the city.
Questions travelers ask
What is the weather in Cartagena in December?
The start of the dry season: 45 millimeters of rain on about 3 days, highs of 31.4 and lows of 24.8, 7.7 hours of sun, the trade wind returning. The first half of the month is quiet and the second half is the year’s peak season.
What is the weather in Cartagena in January?
The driest month of the year: 0.5 millimeters on 0.1 days, highs of 31.1, the year’s lowest low at 24.0, and 8.7 hours of sun a day. The wind is strong and the sea rough for the island boats; the walls are at their best.
What is the weather in Cartagena in November?
The second-wettest month: 178 millimeters on 9 days, highs of 31.5, lows of 25.5, 6 hours of sun and the year’s highest humidity. Storms in the afternoon or at night, calm sea, the independence festivities around November 11, and a dry season that begins in the last week.
What is the rainy season in Cartagena?
May to November, with 94 percent of the year’s rain. October is the wettest month, 237 millimeters on 12 days; June is a lighter pause between the two halves. The rain comes as afternoon and night storms, and most mornings are dry.
Is Cartagena in the hurricane belt?
At the edge of it. The Atlantic season runs from June 1 to November 30 and the storms pass to the north; we know of no hurricane landfall on this city, but the rains of a distant storm can flood it, as Iota’s did in November 2020. San Andrés and Providencia, far to the northwest, are the Colombian islands that take direct hits.
What is the hottest month in Cartagena?
By the daily high, June at 32.3 degrees, with May to September all above 32; by the night, May and June at 26.1. The coolest nights are in January, at 24.0. The difference across the year is two degrees, and the humidity is 79 to 83 percent in every month.
Is Cartagena too hot to visit?
Not if you keep the city’s hours: walk from seven to ten, rest from noon to four, and come out again for the sunset and the evening. Every tour we run is built that way, and the guests who suffer are the ones who walk the walls at one in the afternoon.
When is the sea calm enough for the Rosario Islands?
April to November, when the trade winds are down; the water is also clearest then for snorkeling. From December to March the wind blows every day, boats leave early to beat it, and on the roughest days the port authority holds them; a private captain reads the morning and decides.
Plan it with us
Our nine Cartagena tours are planned around this calendar: the private city tour before the heat, the private boat day on the Rosario Islands before the wind, the private sunset boat at the hour the light turns, and the food walk inside the walls for the wet afternoons. Write to us on WhatsApp with your dates, or start with our Cartagena tours page.
Sources
The figures on this page were checked on September 12, 2026 against the following sources: IDEAM’s 1991 to 2020 climatological normals for the Aeropuerto Rafael Núñez, Santa Ana, Bayunca and Escuela Naval stations, published on Colombia’s open data portal; IDEAM’s El Niño statement of September 10, 2026; NOAA’s Atlantic hurricane season update of August 6, 2026; the National Hurricane Center’s report on Hurricane Iota; DIMAR’s maritime notice of September 7, 2026 and its trade-wind notice for the Caribbean coast; the Alcaldía de Cartagena’s report of February 3, 2026 on the mar de leva; and our own tour pages for the tours named. Sunrise and sunset times are calculated for the city’s coordinates and rounded to the minute.
