The Best Time To Visit Mexico City

From June to September the pattern is consistent enough to plan around: clear or bright mornings, cloud building through the early afternoon, and a heavy storm from about four, often violent for an hour and then finished. Streets flood at the low points, traffic seizes, and by seven the sky is usually clear again.

So a wet-season day works like this: museums and markets in the morning, lunch at two, something indoors or covered at four, and the evening back outside. Every itinerary in this guide is built that way — the three-day plan ends each day under a roof, and Xochimilco is scheduled for two rather than four.

What you gain in the wet months: the clearest air of the year, because the rain washes the valley — the volcanoes are visible far more often in August than in March — plus green hillsides, fewer visitors and lower rates. What you lose is the guarantee of a dry afternoon, and any plan that depends on one.

January–February. Dry, bright, cool nights at 7 °C. Quiet after the first week of January. Good walking weather and the lowest rain of the year.

March–April. The warmest and driest stretch, when the jacarandas turn the city purple in late March — and also the worst air of the year, with thermal inversions trapping ozone in the valley before the rains break. Semana Santa empties the city of locals and fills the roads out of it.

May. Hot by local standards, hazy, and the last dry month; the rains usually arrive in the second half.

June–September. The wet half: 148 to 186 mm a month, rain on 18 to 24 days, and the clearest air of the year between storms. September is the wettest month on the thirty-year average and also carries the Independence celebrations on the 15th and 16th.

October. The rain drops away, the air is still washed, and the city is not yet full. Our pick, with November.

November. Día de Muertos on the 1st and 2nd, the parade at the start of the month, and the busiest, most expensive days of the year — extraordinary if that is why you came, and to be avoided if it is not.

December. Dry and cool, with the posadas through the month and the Guadalupe pilgrimage on the 12th; the last fortnight is the year's other price peak.

The two price peaks are the Día de Muertos week at the start of November and the last fortnight of December, with Semana Santa a smaller third. The cheapest stretches are the rainy months — June to September — and the second half of January, once the holidays are over.

Because the weather is mild all year, the trade is unusually clean: paying less means accepting afternoon rain rather than accepting cold or heat. For a visitor whose days are museums, markets and one boat, that is a smaller sacrifice than it would be in a beach city. The hotel bands by district, read on Google Hotels for a midweek night in October, are on where to stay.

Altitude. The city sits at about 2,240 metres in every month of the year. The first day is the one that bites — shortness of breath on stairs, a headache, alcohol landing harder — and no season changes that. The altitude page has what to do about it.

Air. The worst air is in the dry, still weeks of February to May, when thermal inversions hold ozone and particulates over the valley and the city occasionally declares environmental contingencies that restrict driving. The cleanest air is in the rainy months, which is the strongest single argument for visiting in the season everyone avoids.

Come in October or November for the best combination of dry weather and washed air, and book early if your dates touch Día de Muertos. Come in June to September if you want the lowest prices and do not mind planning your afternoons indoors. Come in March if you want the jacarandas and can live with the haze.

Whatever you pick, the day that matters more than the month is the Monday, which closes most of the museums — and the plan that works around it is the three-day itinerary, inside the wider Mexico City city guide.