The best time to visit Makkah, if you are choosing on weather and crowds alone, is the stretch from late November to early February, when daytime heat is at its most forgiving and the city sits between its two great peaks of Ramadan and Hajj. That answer comes with two qualifications. The Islamic calendar moves against the Gregorian one by about eleven days a year, so the crowded weeks shift, and in 2027 Ramadan itself will fall inside that cool window. And the quietest weeks are not always the ones that suit a family’s school holidays or a worker’s leave. What follows is a season-by-season account of Makkah’s climate, built on what the National Center for Meteorology (NCM) publishes, with a frank description of when the Haram and its surrounding streets are fullest.

What does Makkah’s climate look like across the year?

Makkah sits in a hot desert climate in a valley below the Hijaz escarpment, close enough to the Red Sea to pick up humidity but far enough inland to lose the sea breeze that makes Jeddah feel different. The result is a long, intensely hot season from roughly May to October, a short and pleasant winter, and very little rainfall, most of which arrives in sudden bursts in the autumn and early winter and again in spring.

The NCM’s climate statistics bulletins, which use a 1991–2020 reference period for station averages and 1985–2025 for records and extremes, consistently place Makkah among the hottest manned stations in the Kingdom. The October bulletin states that Makkah recorded 23 days with maximums of 45°C or higher in October across 1985–2025, more than any other station in the country, and the September bulletin says the city averages about five such days then, level with Al-Qaisumah and Al-Ahsa. Those figures should frame any decision about time in the open between late spring and mid-autumn.

Makkah weather month by month: the cool season

December and January

These are the most comfortable weeks for walking, for the Mataf in daylight, and for a visit to Jabal al-Nour or the Hira Cultural District. Days are warm rather than hot, nights are genuinely cool, and a light layer is useful before Fajr. A downpour is still possible: the centre’s outlook for the last quarter of 2026 gave parts of the Makkah region a 40–50 per cent chance of above-normal December rainfall and described the expected intensity as heavy to very heavy when it falls. A shower in Makkah tends to be short, loud and disruptive to traffic rather than prolonged.

February

Still cool by local standards and often the pick of the year, February in the coming season is also the first stretch of Ramadan, which transforms the city. The weather will favour long evenings in the courtyards, but the central area will be as crowded as it ever gets. If you want mild weather and a quieter mosque in the same trip, aim for the first half of February in a year when Ramadan falls later.

Spring in Makkah: the window closes

March

March is the hinge. Early March next year carries the last ten nights of Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr, with the crowds those bring. Once Eid has passed the city empties quickly, and the second half often combines warm, settled weather with a noticeably calmer Haram. Humidity starts to climb from mid-March.

April

Daytime heat becomes something to plan around rather than ignore. Mornings are still excellent for ziyarah stops in the open, but the middle of the day is for shade, the hotel or the air-conditioned interior of the mosque. Spring is also one of the two periods when thunderstorms can roll in off the escarpment, and the NCM’s early warning map is the place to check before you commit to a hillside visit.

Summer in Makkah: May to September

May and June

Summer arrives in full. Hajj 1448 is expected in mid-May, so the second half of May and the days around Eid al-Adha bring the heaviest security controls, the pause in Umrah for overseas pilgrims and a complete change in how the central area is managed. June is hot, dry and, once the Hajj season has wound down, relatively quiet for a few weeks before the Saudi school holidays begin. Anyone visiting at this point should treat the midday hours as indoor time without exception.

July and August

This is the peak of the heat. The August bulletin describes August as having the highest mean maximum temperature in the Kingdom’s 1991–2020 normals, and its station charts place Makkah in the upper part of the national rankings for both mean maximum and mean minimum, which in practice means that even the night does not fall far below 30°C. Rainfall is slight. Saudi schools are on holiday and many GCC and diaspora families travel, so the city is busier than the heat might suggest, especially after Isha.

September

September is still summer in every practical sense. Nationally it ranks fourth for mean maximum temperature, and in Makkah it brings, on average, about five days at or above 45°C. It is also one of the wetter spells by desert standards: the September bulletin lists Makkah and Taif jointly second among Saudi stations for days of heavy rainfall between 1985 and 2025, with eleven such days each over that period. The one consolation is that once the Saudi school term resumes the central area is quieter than in high summer.

Autumn in Makkah: October and November

October

This is the stretch people underestimate. Afternoons are still very hot, and the 23 days at or above 45°C on record work out at roughly one such day every other year, but the trend is downward and mornings begin to feel pleasant again. Wet weather returns as a real planning factor. The NCM’s autumn 2026 outlook gave the Makkah region a probability of up to 80 per cent of above-normal rainfall, expected to be heavy to very heavy, and the outlook for the final quarter warned that totals in Makkah could reach what the centre classes as extremely heavy. Flash flooding on the roads into the valley is the risk to respect.

November

By November the heat has broken for most visitors, with warm days and mild nights. The same outlooks expected warmer-than-normal conditions over most regions of the Kingdom, with a 40–80 per cent probability, and a 40–70 per cent chance of above-normal falls in the Makkah region, again heavy to very heavy when they come. Taken together, late November is the start of the real sweet spot, and crowds outside Ramadan at this point are moderate rather than extreme.

Where do these figures come from, and how exact are they?

Everything quantitative above is taken from the text of the NCM’s published climate statistics bulletins and its seasonal outlooks, checked in mid-October 2026. The bulletins give Kingdom-wide normals as numbers and station-level normals as bar charts without printed values, which is why this guide describes Makkah’s temperatures in words and relative terms rather than quoting a mean maximum to one decimal place. Where the centre states a Makkah figure in text, such as the counts of days at or above 45°C, we have quoted it; where it does not, we have not guessed. Exact normals can be requested from its historical weather data service.

For day-to-day planning the Mashaer weather page is more useful than any climatology. It covers Makkah, Madinah, Mina, Muzdalifah and Arafat, showing what the sky is doing now, the outlook for the coming days and that day’s salah times, and it flags any active warnings for each place. Our guide to travelling in Makkah during a rain or dust warning explains what the yellow, orange and red alerts mean for a booked journey.

When is Makkah least crowded?

Knowing when Makkah is least crowded is a calendar question before it is a weather one: crowds in Makkah follow the Hijri calendar. The two peaks are Ramadan, with the last ten nights busiest of all, and the Hajj period in Dhul Hijjah, when access to the city is restricted to permit holders and Umrah for pilgrims from abroad is paused. Between those peaks there are three quieter troughs: the weeks after Eid al-Fitr, the weeks after the Umrah season reopens following Hajj, and the autumn once summer holidays have ended.

Laid over the Gregorian calendar for next year, that means late March and April, late June and July for heat-tolerant visitors, and the autumn. The quietest combination of weather and crowds is therefore late October to early December 2027, with the second half of March a close second if you can handle rising warmth. Bear in mind that “quiet” is relative; the Grand Mosque is never empty, and Fridays are always busier than the days around them. The authority that runs the Two Holy Mosques now shows a live crowd-density reading for the Mataf and Mas’a on its digital channels, which is the quickest way to judge how a given day is running in the Tawaf and Sa’i areas.

How the moving Hijri calendar changes the answer every year

Because the Islamic year is about eleven days shorter than the Gregorian one, Ramadan moves earlier each year. It sat in March in 2025 and 2026, is expected to start around 8 February in 2027 and will edge into late January by 2028. Hajj follows the same drift, from June in 2025 to late May in 2026 and mid-May in 2027. For a planner this means that a Gregorian date range that was quiet one year can be a peak the next, so always convert the Hijri dates for the year you are travelling before you book, and treat published dates as provisional until the Saudi authorities confirm the moon sighting.

The Ministry of Hajj and Umrah’s Nusuk platform is where Umrah permits are booked and where the current season’s availability shows, which makes it the quickest way to see whether the dates you have in mind fall inside an open Umrah window. The Ministry also publishes the Umrah season calendar, including the last date for pilgrims to enter and leave on Umrah visas, so check those boundaries before fixing a spring trip.

Best time to visit Makkah for each kind of visitor

Different groups should weigh the same calendar differently. Elderly visitors and anyone who finds heat difficult gain most from the cool season, and should treat anything from May to September as a trip to be built around indoor hours, even if the mosque is quieter. For them, late November to January outside Ramadan is the natural choice, with the second half of March as the fall-back.

Families tied to school terms face a harder trade. The long summer holiday coincides with the hottest weather, and next year the UK February half-term and the Easter break both touch Ramadan or its immediate aftermath, when crowds are heaviest and permits scarcest. Many families find that the autumn half-term in late October is the realistic compromise: still hot in the afternoon, but with cooler mornings, moderate crowds and permits easier to secure. If you are travelling with young children, our guide to things to do in Makkah with children explains how to shape an outing around nap times and the heat.

Visitors on short leave who care more about an unhurried Umrah than about the weather have the widest choice: any week outside Ramadan and Dhul Hijjah gives them space in the Mataf at the quieter times of day.

Planning outings around the heat

From May to October the day in Makkah has a shape that visitors learn fast. The useful outdoor window runs from Fajr to mid-morning, the middle of the day belongs indoors, and the evening after Maghrib is when the city comes alive, with families eating out and the plazas filling again. A ziyarah to the historic sites, a visit to the museums or a trip up to the viewpoints should start as early as the group can manage, which is why we wrote a separate guide to early-morning ziyarah and post-Fajr pickups.

In the cool season the shape relaxes. Midday outings become comfortable, and a day trip up the escarpment to Taif, which is markedly cooler than Makkah all year, can be enjoyed at any hour; see our guide to a Taif day trip from Makkah. Whatever the season, carry water, cover your head in the sun, and plan a seated rest for anyone elderly between stops. The UK government’s health guidance for Saudi Arabia, updated in September 2026, singles out heat stroke and dehydration as hot-weather dangers and tells travellers to keep up their intake of fluids and salts.

Two fictional households choosing their dates

A retired couple weighing autumn against Ramadan

Imagine a retired couple from Birmingham, both in their late sixties, with the freedom to travel in either October 2026 or February 2027. They are invented to show the reasoning and are not drawn from any booking. They want to perform Umrah, spend unhurried time in the mosque and visit the historic sites without rushing. Autumn offers them quieter streets and a shorter wait for Umrah permits, but afternoons that can still be dangerously hot and a storm risk that could disrupt a day’s plans. February offers them the weather they would choose for a walking holiday, but this time it is Ramadan, with the heaviest crowds of the year and Umrah permit slots that are hard to secure.

They settle on the second half of November instead, after reading the seasonal outlook and checking the Hijri calendar: cooler than October, calmer than Ramadan, and with enough daylight comfort to plan one outing each morning. The point is not that November is right for everyone, but that the right dates are found by laying the Hijri calendar over the climate rather than picking one or the other.

A family with school-age children and only the summer free

Now picture a family of five from Manchester, again imaginary, whose only long break is the school summer holiday. July in Makkah means the hottest weather of the year and busy evenings, and they know it. Rather than abandon the trip, they reshape it: Umrah and the Mataf in the hours after Fajr, the hotel or the mosque’s air-conditioned interior from late morning until Asr, and one short ziyarah or museum visit after Maghrib. They fix the taxi pickup just after Fajr, keep a spare day in case a child struggles with the heat, and leave Taif for their last full day. It is not the ideal time, but it works because the day, not the calendar, has been planned around the climate.

Storms, dust and the days the forecast is wrong

Makkah’s rain is rare but rarely gentle. The NCM’s warning system uses three levels, and the difference matters: yellow means an area may be affected by a weather phenomenon, orange means it is affected and caution should be taken, and red means severe weather or flooding is under way, full caution must be exercised and Civil Defence instructions must be followed. During a red alert, roads into the valley can close without notice and the sensible choice is to stay where you are.

Dust is the other seasonal visitor, most often in spring and early summer. It affects visibility and air quality more than movement, but anyone with a breathing condition should check the warnings before a hillside visit. In both cases a booked car can be moved to a later slot; our drivers watch the same alerts, and the booking tool is the place to adjust a pickup if the day turns.

Season-by-season quick reference

  • December to February: coolest and most comfortable; Ramadan 1448 fills February and early March; a 40–50 per cent chance of above-normal December rainfall in the 2026 outlook.
  • March: Eid al-Fitr early on, then a quieter, warming second half.
  • April: warm to hot, spring thunderstorm risk, outings best before mid-morning.
  • May and June: Hajj 1448 expected mid-May; Umrah for overseas pilgrims paused around it; heat established.
  • July and August: hottest weeks nationally and in Makkah, nights that stay close to 30°C, school-holiday crowds.
  • September: still very hot, about five days at 45°C or more on average, eleven heavy-rain days on record since 1985, quieter after term starts.
  • October: heat easing, highest autumn storm risk, with the 2026 outlook warning of possible extremely heavy falls.
  • November: the sweet spot begins; warm days, mild nights, moderate crowds, showers still possible.

Checklist before you fix your dates

  • Convert the Hijri calendar for your travel year and mark Ramadan, Eid al-Fitr, Dhul Hijjah and Eid al-Adha.
  • Check Umrah permit availability and the season calendar on Nusuk for the weeks you have in mind.
  • Read the seasonal outlook for your travel window and bookmark the early-warning page.
  • If travelling May to October, plan outings for the morning and keep the middle of the day indoors.
  • If travelling in autumn or early winter, allow for a storm day in the itinerary.
  • Decide whether cool weather or quiet streets matters more to your group, because next February you cannot have both.

Choosing your dates with Makkah Cabs

Whichever season you choose, car journeys in Makkah are easier when they are planned around the day’s heat and the week’s crowds rather than squeezed in between them. When you have fixed your dates, see our guide to things to do in Makkah after Umrah for outing ideas, then book your transfers through Makkah Cabs; tell us when you are travelling and we will suggest pickup times that suit it.

Sources reviewed 15 October 2026: National Center for Meteorology (climate statistics bulletins for August, September and October; autumn 2026 outlook for September–November; outlook for October–December 2026; early warning page; Mashaer weather page), Nusuk (Ministry of Hajj and Umrah), Pilgrims Experience Program (live crowd-density service for the Two Holy Mosques, July 2026), FCDO travel advice for Saudi Arabia (health page). Station temperature normals are described qualitatively because the NCM publishes them as charts without printed values, and all Hijri dates are projections subject to moon sighting. Photo: Gun Tfk / Pexels.