Dubai month by month

The Gulf is not like that. Here the heat is the whole story, and it is not close. From November to March Dubai is one of the more pleasant cities in the world to be outdoors in. From June to September it is a place you move through in short dashes between air-conditioned buildings. Those are different holidays, and the calendar decides which one you get.

Everything else, the prices, the crowds, the desert, the mountains, the sea, follows from that one fact.

The year in one table

Daytime highs and night-time lows are for the city. The desert and the mountains run three to eight degrees Fahrenheit cooler at night and hotter by day.

Rain is close to irrelevant. Dubai gets a handful of wet days a year, almost all between December and March, and they are usually short. When it does rain heavily the roads flood, because the city is not built for it, and a day can be lost. That is worth knowing but it is not worth planning against.

November to March, the real season

This is the answer for almost everyone, and the rest of this article is detail around it.

November is the reopening. The heat breaks somewhere in the first half of the month, the desert becomes a place you want to spend an evening rather than endure one, and the mountain roads are cool at the top. Prices climb through the month as the season fills.

December is the reliable core and the most expensive weeks of the year sit at the end of it. Days are warm and dry, nights genuinely cool, and inland or in the desert a December night can drop to around 55F (13C), which catches out people who packed only for a beach. Bring a jacket.

January is the coolest month and the best one for anything involving walking. The sea is around 72F (22C), which is swimmable if you are used to the Atlantic and cold if you are used to the Indian Ocean. Hotel beaches heat their pools.

February and March are our own preference and we book them before anything else. The weather is indistinguishable from December and January. The prices are materially lower. The crowds at the observation decks, the mosque and the desert camps are thinner. If your dates are flexible, this is where the flexibility is worth the most money.

By the end of March the middle of the day is warm enough that you start planning around it again.

April and October, the shoulder

Both work, with a caveat each.

April warms fast. The first two weeks are close to March. The last week is close to May. A trip built around early starts, indoor middle-of-the-day and late afternoons works well, and the prices have come off the peak.

October cools slowly, and the coastal humidity in the first half is the part people underestimate. The temperature says 95F (35C), which sounds survivable, and the humidity makes it feel worse than a dry 105F. The second half of October is the better bet and is good value.

For a two or three night stopover, either shoulder month is fine. You are mostly indoors, at dinner, or out early.

June to September, honestly not

Highs sit around 106F (41C) and the coastal humidity makes it worse rather than better. Night temperatures frequently stay above 85F (30C), so there is no cool part of the day to retreat into. A hotel pool in August is heated by the sun to roughly the temperature of a bath and provides no relief.

A summer trip to Dubai is a trip between air-conditioned interiors. Malls, hotels, indoor attractions, aquariums, the ski slope, the water parks. Some of that is genuinely enjoyable, particularly with children, and the hotel rates are the lowest of the year by a wide margin. But that is not a discount, it is a market clearing, and it is the honest reason the room is cheap.

We will build a summer trip if your dates are fixed. It will be built around 7am starts, indoor days and water, and we will tell you plainly what you are giving up: the desert, the mountains, the old city on foot, and any pleasure in walking anywhere.

We would not build a summer trip into the Hajar mountains at all. See walking the Hajar mountains and the wadis for why.

Ramadan

Ramadan moves through the calendar by about eleven days a year, so its position relative to the season changes and it currently falls in the cooler half of the year.

Travelling during it is entirely possible and in some ways more interesting than the rest of the year, but the day works differently. Eating and drinking in public during daylight hours is restricted, including for visitors. Many restaurants close during the day or serve behind screens, hotel restaurants generally serve guests as normal, and some attractions change their hours. Live music and nightlife are limited or absent. Working hours are shorter, so traffic peaks at odd times.

The other side of it is the evening. The meal that breaks the fast is one of the better food experiences in the region, the city comes alive after dark in a way it does not for the rest of the year, and the atmosphere in the older districts is genuinely worth being there for.

We tell you where the dates fall for your window and let you decide. Some clients move their trip. Some deliberately book into it.

The month decides the trip shape

Related

• Dubai and the Gulf: the complete guide
• What a trip to Dubai costs
• Dubai for the first time
• Desert and mountains in 7 days
• All our Gulf trips

Frequently asked questions