Best time to visit Gran Canaria: weather, sea, the price of a hotel night and who fills the hotels, month by month

Gran Canaria's hotels never empty: even in the emptiest month, May, 68% of beds are taken. So the main difference between months here is not the weather but the price. And the price does not behave as you would expect: the dearest month, December, at €179 per room per day, is only the ninth fullest. The hotels are fullest in August and in February, and a night then costs less than in December. The cheapest month is June: €120.

Short answers

• December is the dearest month and June the cheapest; the gap is 49%.
• Hotels are fullest in August and in February: 84% and 83% of beds taken.
• Guests from Spain are most numerous in August (21% of nights) and fewest in February (6%).
• A guest from abroad stays 7.3 nights on average, a guest from Spain 3.4 nights.
• Winter days at the airport average 21.4 °C, summer days 26.6 °C; winter nights 15.4 °C.
• The sea in the south runs from 19.2 °C in March to 23.6 °C in September.
• The south's cafés have the fewest staff in early summer, not in winter.

Gran Canaria month by month

«Day» and «night» are the average daytime high and overnight low at Gran Canaria airport, the AEMETAEMETSpain's state meteorological agency. It runs the weather stations and publishes the climate norms.Why it matters. Our sunshine hours and winter temperatures come from observations, not from resort marketing. The gap between the two can be several degrees. normal for 1981–2010. «Sea» is off Maspalomas, 2015–2024 satellite averages. «Hotel night» is what the island's hotels took on average per room sold per day, and «occupied» is the share of beds taken; both are INEINESpain's National Statistics Institute. It keeps the padrón — the official register of residents of every municipality.Why it matters. The only primary source of population for the whole country. A figure 'per INE' can be checked against a table; a figure 'from the internet' cannot. series for September 2025 to August 2026. AEMET, NOAA OISST, room price, occupancy.

The dearest month is not the fullest

The island has two occupancy peaks, at opposite ends of the year: August (84%) and February (83%). A night in those months costs €151 and €165. December, with 74% of beds taken, costs €179. In December the island's hotels earn from the price of each night rather than the number of guests.

A year earlier December was also the dearest, so this is not one odd year. The emptiest month is May (68%), and the cheapest is the month next to it, June. On Tenerife over the same year the dearest month was March: neighbouring islands keep different price calendars. Best time to visit Tenerife.

Over the year the average night across all twelve months barely moved: +0.7%. The months, though, pulled apart. November rose most, +6.9%; October, November and December all went up by more than four per cent. June fell by 6%. So the gap between December and June widened in a year from 32% to 49%: the cheap month got cheaper and the dear one dearer.

Who fills the hotels, and for how long

Guests from abroad are the majority in every month, but Spaniards come on their own calendar. Their share of hotel nights runs from 6% in February to 21% in August. So the island's two peaks are two different guests: in August Spaniards account for 21% of nights, in February for 6%.

And they stay differently. INE publishes both nights and arrivals, and the ratio is the average length of stay. Over the year a guest from abroad stayed 7.3 nights on average, a guest from Spain 3.4 nights: the foreign guest stays 2.2 times as long. Foreign guests stay longest in September: 7.8 nights. One more thing: in every month of the series, all 24 of them, a foreign guest on Gran Canaria stayed longer than on Tenerife; over the last year, 7.3 nights against 6.6 nights. Nights and arrivals.

Spaniards stay longest in August: 4.1 nights; in no other month more than 3.7 nights. Arrivals themselves barely move from month to month: the fewest guests came in February and the most in August, and the difference between them is 20%.

December or February

The two winter months part ways on almost every series. December is warmer: by 1 °C by day and 1.2 °C at night, and the water in the south is 1.7 °C warmer, 21.1 °C against 19.4 °C. February has 12 more hours of sun and less rain. December is the wettest month of the normal: 31 mm over 4.5 rain days, against 24 mm over 3 in February.

A hotel night in December costs 8% more than in February, though only 74% of beds are taken against 83%. Spanish guests account for 9% of December's nights and 6% of February's. So December is warmer on land and in the water, while February is sunnier, drier and cheaper, with the fullest hotels of the winter.

Where the hotels are: nearly all in the south

INE treats the island's resort south as a zone of its own. It holds 89% of Gran Canaria's hotel beds and 91% of the year's nights. Of our places, Maspalomas and Mogán are in the south; Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Telde are in the north-east, and they are cities, not resorts. So the hotel calendar in this article is in effect the south's calendar; the capital keeps its own, and how the staff in its cafés changes is in the table below.

Hotel staff on the island barely changes: in the quietest month there are 96% as many as in the busiest. On Mallorca over the same year, the quietest month had 7% of the summer number: most hotels there shut for the winter, and here they do not. Best time to visit Mallorca.

Weather: one station for the island

Our data holds one AEMET normal for Gran Canaria, at the airport on the east coast, 24 m above the sea, between the capital and the resort south. It has no station with a normal for Las Palmas itself, so there is no month-by-month weather here for the capital. The daytime temperature at the airport moves only 6.7 °C over the year: from 20.8 °C in January to 27.5 °C in August.

Rain is gathered into four months: from November to February falls 70% of it, and the year's normal is 151 mm; June, July and August average zero millimetres. There are about 22 rain days a year. Sun comes to 2,822 hours a year, most in July (308) and least in December (179). Fully clear days number 71 a year, most of them in July.

The sea

The water off the south and off the capital is nearly the same: no month differs by more than 0.1 °C. It is coldest in March, 19.2 °C, and warmest in September, 23.6 °C. The swimming line of 20 °C holds for 9 months in the south and 8 off the capital; the difference is January, when the water in the south sits right on the line. Even in the warmest month the sea is cooler than the daytime air. The swimming season along the whole coast.

The quiet month is June, not January

Social Security counts, month by month, how many people work in cafés, hotels and shops in each municipality. In the south of the island, cafés and restaurants have the fewest staff in June. The dip is deepest in the municipality of Mogán: 84% of the peak in December. The south peaks in November (Maspalomas) and in December (Mogán): for the south, winter is the season. And nothing closes for the winter: in January 2025 all four places kept at least 99% of their best month's businesses. Social Security series.

Maspalomas lies within the municipality of San Bartolomé de Tirajana, and its figures are the municipality's.

Further

How Gran Canaria compares with the other islands on winter, sun and rent is in which Canary Island to choose. Taxes, fuel and household spending are in the cost of living in the Canaries, and a pair of neighbouring islands in Tenerife or Lanzarote. Our places on the island are on the Gran Canaria page.

Read next

Gran Canaria's beaches by water quality: excellent everywhere but Puerto de Mogán

Gran Canaria or Fuerteventura: about a third apart in winter, level in summer

Gran Canaria or Lanzarote: alike over the year, different month by month