When to visit Morocco: a season for each part of it

Morocco runs from the Mediterranean to the Sahara, with a mountain range across the middle of it and two long coasts, and the difference between Agadir and Marrakesh on the same July afternoon is about fourteen degrees. That is the whole answer to the question of seasons: choose the part of the country and the month follows.

It helps to think of four Moroccos. There is the Atlantic seaboard, mild all year and windy. There is the north, with a Mediterranean climate and real winter rain. There is the interior plateau, home to Marrakesh and Fes, hot in summer and cold at night in winter. And there are the mountains and the desert beyond them, which run from snow to sand in a single morning of driving.

Spring and autumn: the two easy windows

April and October are the months when most of the country works at once. Days are in the twenties inland, the desert is warm without being punishing, the mountains are clear of snow and the north is still green from the winter rain. March and November are the shoulders of those shoulders: cheaper, quieter, and occasionally wet in the north.

The catch is that everyone else has worked this out. Easter, the October half term in Europe and the Christmas and New Year fortnight are the peaks for the whole country, and the riads in Marrakesh and the desert camps around Merzouga fill first. If your dates are fixed, book accommodation four to six months ahead; if they are not, moving a week either side of a holiday is worth more than any discount.

Summer: the coast, the mountains, and an empty Marrakesh

From June to August the interior becomes a different proposition. Marrakesh averages 37.7 degrees in July and has recorded 49.6, Fes runs hotter still, and the sensible hours for walking a medina shrink to the early morning and the evening. The desert towns are hotter again, and the pre-Saharan routes are worth leaving alone in the middle of the day.

The coast is the answer, and it is the reason Agadir exists as a resort: average daily highs there only reach 27 degrees at the peak of summer, and the Canary Current keeps the sea cool rather than warm. Essaouira is milder still, between eighteen and twenty three degrees all year, with the trade wind running every afternoon. The other option is altitude: the High Atlas valleys around Imlil sit high enough to be pleasant in July, which is why the walking season there runs through the summer.

One warning for the south: the chergui, a wind off the Sahara, can lift coastal temperatures above forty degrees for two to five days in late summer, and took Agadir to 50.4 degrees in August 2023. It is rare, it is brief, and it is worth knowing about before you book a beach week in August.

Winter: sun on the coast, snow in the mountains

Winter is the season the south of Morocco sells. Agadir averages 21 degrees in January with very little rain, Marrakesh averages 19 degrees by day, and the desert is pleasant in the sunshine, though the nights in a dune camp drop close to freezing and the tents come with blankets for a reason. Marrakesh has recorded minus 3.6 degrees in January, so a riad with a courtyard and no heating is a real consideration.

Further north and inland it is genuinely cold and often wet, and the mountains are closed to casual travel: snow lies above about 3,000 metres from December into March, the Tizi n’Tichka and other passes can shut for a day or two at a time, and the ski area above Marrakesh opens when the snow allows. Rain is the bigger issue for planning than cold. Casablanca takes about 400 millimetres a year, most of it between November and March; Essaouira about 300; the interior about half that; and the desert almost none.

Festivals, Ramadan and the calendar

Three events reshape a trip and are worth planning around. The Gnaoua festival in Essaouira runs for four days in the last week of June and fills the town with music and visitors. The Timitar festival of Amazigh culture has been held in Agadir each summer since 2004. The Marrakech international film festival brings a different kind of crowd in the winter, and the town books out around it.

Ramadan is the one to check first, because it moves: the Islamic calendar is lunar, its year is ten to eleven days shorter than the solar one, and the month therefore migrates through the seasons across about three decades. During it, many restaurants close in the daytime and the ones that stay open serve visitors; eating, drinking or smoking in public during the fast can attract a fine in Morocco, so it is worth being discreet. The evenings, on the other hand, are the liveliest of the year, and the end of the month brings Eid, when transport and hotels fill up fast.

There is no wrong month to visit Morocco, only a wrong pairing of month and place. Take the coast in winter, the cities in spring and autumn, the mountains in summer, and the desert on either side of it, and the weather stops being something you endure and becomes part of the itinerary.