The best time to visit Tunisia, month by month

Month by month

These are the long term monthly averages of Tunisia's national weather service, the Institut National de la Météorologie, in Fahrenheit first with the service's own Celsius beside it. Tunis is on the coast and Tozeur is in the desert. They are the two stations for which we hold every month of the year, and the difference between them is most of the answer.

The last column counts our private journeys. We suggest a month for a journey unless the average daytime high reaches 95F (35C) at a place on its route that the service's table covers, and we always leave out December to February. The temperatures are the weather service's. The months are our advice.

The months for each of our journeys

Each journey goes somewhere different, so each has its own months. They are worked out from where the journey sleeps and what it visits, and they are the same months that appear on the journey's own page (our journey pages).

All of them take March to May and September to November. June is also suggested for Carthage, Kairouan and the Coast, From Carthage to Kairouan and Tunisia's Mediterranean Treasures. Those are the journeys that stay out of the Sahara: none of them reaches Tozeur or Douz.

Where the heat is

The line we use, 95F (35C), is ours and not an official threshold. None of the government advisories we used for these guides sets a heat cut-off. The weather service's table tells us where the average daytime high reaches it.

Three things follow from the table. The oases and salt flats around Tozeur, and Douz, reach the line in June, July and August, and September is just under it. The inland places on the Roman and Kairouan routes reach it in July and August. Tunis, the coast and the islands never reach it in any month the service lists: the warmest month at Tunis is August, at 93.4F (34.1C).

Winter

We leave out December to February. They are the three coolest months at Tunis and at Tozeur, and Tunis is at its wettest in December, with 75.2mm (3.0 in) of rain, and in January, with 63.1mm (2.5 in). July is the driest month there, with 4.0mm (0.2 in).

In the desert the days are mild and the nights are cold. The average daytime high in January is 61.7F (16.5C) at Tozeur, and the average low is 43.9F (6.6C). At Kebili, the service's station for Douz, the January average low is 40.3F (4.6C).

Tabarka, on the north coast, is the wettest station in the service's table, with 960.2mm (37.8 in) a year, against 471.6mm (18.6 in) at Tunis.

The summer of 2026 ran hot

An average describes a normal year, and the weather service's own bulletins say the summer of 2026 was not one. In July the national mean temperature was 31.7C (89.1F) against a 1991 to 2020 normal of 28.4C (83.1F), the second hottest July since 1950 after July 2023, with several stations setting new maximum temperature records (July bulletin). August was the hottest August since 1950, at 32.3C (90.1F) against a normal of 28.9C (84.0F), and the heat waves late in the month were among the most severe since 1950, especially in the centre and the south. Rainfall over 26 main stations totalled 168.7 mm against a normal of 320.4 mm, a deficit of about 47 percent (August bulletin).

The averages on this page are long term normals and not forecasts.

Ramadan in 2027

Ramadan 2027 is expected to begin around 8 February and end around 8 March, with Eid al-Fitr about 9 or 10 March. The dates are subject to confirmation once the crescent moon is sighted, so they can shift by a day (The National, Gulf News).

The start falls in the winter months we leave out. The end falls at the very beginning of March, the first month of our spring window, so if you are thinking of early March, say so when you start planning.

How we know, and what we could not verify

• The figures are the weather service's table, and the rule for the months is ours. A month is only left out where the table covers a place on the route.
• Three published sets of figures for Tunis-Carthage disagree by up to 1.4C. The July average high is 33.8C in the weather service's table, 32.6C in the World Meteorological Organization's 1961 to 1990 set and 34.0C in the 1991 to 2020 normals on Wikipedia. We use the weather service's table and do not mix sets in one comparison.
• The service's page says its normals are for 1981 to 2010, while its data file labels them 1961 to 1990. Its sunshine totals match the 1981 to 2010 series, so we read the table as that set. That reading is our inference.
• No station sits at a site. Each place uses the nearest station: Kebili for Douz, Jendouba for Bulla Regia, Beja for Dougga, Kasserine for Sbeitla, Kairouan for Kairouan and El Djem, and Tozeur for Tozeur, Nefta, Mos Espa and the Chott el Jerid.
• We use no figure for Ksar Ghilane, Hammamet or Sousse, and so say nothing about their heat.
• Whether a month is too hot is a judgment. The 95F line is ours.

Sources