Taiwan month by month, and why the two coasts disagree

The north is subtropical and the south is tropical. The east takes the weather off the Pacific and the west sits in the rain shadow of a mountain range that runs the length of the island, with 268 peaks above 9,840 feet (3,000 m). The mountains have their own rules entirely. A month that is wrong for Taipei can be right for Kenting, and a week that closes the east coast line can leave Tainan in sunshine.

So here is the year, coast by coast.

The year at a glance

October to December, the season we recommend

This is the best window. The summer heat has gone, typhoon risk falls away through October, the air is clearer than at any other time and the autumn light in the mountains is the reason photographers come.

November is our single favourite month: dry, mild, clear, and the mountains at their most reliable.

The caveat is the north-east. From roughly late October the north-east monsoon starts pushing damp air onto Taipei, Keelung and the Yilan coast, and December in Taipei can be a run of grey, drizzly days at around 63F (17C). It is not cold and it is not dramatic, it is simply wet in a low, persistent way, and it makes Jiufen and the northern coast a great deal less appealing than the photographs.

The south stays sunny through all of it. On a December trip we weight the itinerary southward: fewer nights in Taipei, more in Tainan, Kaohsiung and the south-east.

March and April, the second window

Warm, mostly dry, and the tea and the mountains at their best. Alishan’s cherry blossom season falls here and it is busy accordingly.

Late March and April are also when the Dajia Mazu pilgrimage moves across the west of the island: nine days, a sea goddess statue carried some 200 miles (320 km), and hundreds of thousands of people accompanying it, feeding it and kneeling in the road for it to pass over them. If your dates coincide we will build a day around it, because there is nothing else like it in East Asia. It also fills hotels along the route, which is the other half of that sentence.

May and June, the plum rains

Meiyu, the plum rain season, runs from around May to mid-June and brings sustained frontal rain rather than short afternoon showers. It is not a washout, and it is genuinely humid.

Rates are lower and the island is green. If your dates are fixed here we build indoors-first days, keep the mountains flexible and put the tea country early in the trip, when a wet morning in a tea house is a pleasure rather than a loss. Our Asia-wide piece on travelling in the monsoon covers the general principle.

July to October, typhoon season and the heat

Two separate problems that overlap.

Typhoons. The season runs roughly July to October and peaks in August and September. A direct or near hit shuts the island down for a day or two: high speed rail suspends, the east coast line closes, ferries to the outer islands stop, mountain roads close and are usually the last thing to reopen, and everyone sensibly stays indoors. Warning is normally two to four days, which is enough to rearrange a day and not enough to reroute a whole trip.

We do not treat this as a disclaimer. We build an alternative for every exposed day at the quoting stage, we tell you which days those are, and our partner team in Taiwan executes the change on the ground. Taiwan is not one of our own offices, which we say on every page, and this is precisely the situation where a long-standing local partner earns their fee.

The heat. Taipei in July and August runs to around 95F (35C) with humidity that makes it feel considerably worse, and Tainan and Kaohsiung are hotter still. Afternoon thunderstorms are routine.

Summer is not a lost season, it is a differently shaped one. It is the right time for the high mountains, which run around 25F (14C) cooler than the plain, for Penghu, whose wind is unbearable in winter and welcome in July, and for the outer islands generally. It is the wrong time for a walking day in Tainan at two in the afternoon.

January and February

Cool, damp in the north, pleasant in the south, and the cheapest hotel rates of the year outside the holiday.

The holiday is the thing to know. Lunar New Year falls in late January or February and moves each year. The whole country travels, trains sell out weeks ahead, hotel rates spike and a great many small restaurants close for several days, including some of the ones you came to eat at. We plan around it, or, if you want the festival itself, into it deliberately with everything booked far earlier than usual.

If your dates are fixed

Summer, July to September. Build the trip around altitude and water. Alishan, the high road over Hehuanshan where the pass reaches about 10,745 feet (3,275 m), the East Rift Valley in the mornings, Penghu or Green Island, and city days that start at seven and stop at eleven. Hold two spare days for weather.

Deep winter, December to February. Weight it south. Tainan, Kaohsiung, Kenting, the south-east coast around Taitung, with Taipei at the start or end rather than in the middle. Hot springs are at their best in exactly this weather.

Plum rains, May and June. Tea country, museums, night markets, hot springs, and the mountains kept as a flexible block rather than a fixed date.

Any month, if you want the mountains. Permits for the high routes take lead time regardless of season, and the Yushan main peak is allocated by lottery months ahead. That is a booking-window question rather than a weather question, and we cover it in the mountain article.

What we would tell a friend

Go in November. If November is impossible, go in late October or in April.

If your only window is August, go anyway but change the trip: mountains, islands and early mornings, with a spare day built in and an alternative held for each exposed day. We would rather do that than tell you Taiwan has no bad month, which is the sort of thing travel articles say and ground teams do not.

Plan this trip

Tell us the dates you can travel and we will tell you honestly what those dates buy on each side of the mountains, and where we would weight the trip. Free first outline, no obligation.

Start planning →

Keep reading

• Taiwan: the complete guide to planning your trip
• The best two-week route through Taiwan
• What does a trip to Taiwan really cost?
• Travelling Asia in the monsoon
• Hiking Taiwan in 12 days
• All our Taiwan trips

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