Weather in Cartagena in January

Prime time. If you get to pick your dates, January is the one. Highs average 16.4 °C, lows 9.6 °C, and rain falls on 5 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

Cartagena barely has seasons. January scores 79 out of 100 against a best of 95 in May — a gap small enough that the month you choose matters far less here than the week you choose. Worth keeping in perspective: January is the weakest month of Cartagena's year and it is still a perfectly good one. The downside here is small.

Rain falls on only 5 days, so an itinerary with no wet-weather fallback is a reasonable risk. Pack for 16.4 °C days and 9.6 °C nights; the spread matters more here than any single number.

What the averages hide

The averages here are honest — no hidden extremes worth planning around. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest January day reached 22.6 °C and the coldest night fell to 2.2 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 35 mm — roughly 113% of the month's rain in one day.

This is the volatile part. January rainfall has ranged from 4 mm to 88 mm across the twenty years measured — a 84 mm spread around an average of 31 mm. The average is real but almost no individual January looks like it, so treat the figure as the middle of a wide range rather than a forecast.

Wind is light at 12.2 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 73%.

How January sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 17.1 °C in December, 16.4 here, 16.8 in February. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much.

Daylight in January

January sits at the dark end of Cartagena's year — 9.8 hours of daylight against 14.7 at midsummer, gaining 0.6 hours across the month. Sightseeing days are genuinely shorter, and an itinerary built for summer will not fit.

Sea temperature

The sea sits at about 15.2 °C in January — cold — a quick dip rather than a swim, and a wetsuit if you are in for longer. The sea peaks at 25.7 °C in August and bottoms out at 14.7 °C — water lags the air by a month or two, which is why the best swimming often comes after the best weather.

How busy it gets

Off season. The genuine off season: cheapest by a distance, with the caveat that some tours and restaurants close entirely.

Crowd levels are estimated from climate desirability and school-holiday calendars, not from visitor numbers.

January in Cartagena versus nearby

If Cartagena is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Murcia is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 1 day less rain. Valencia is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, the same number of rain days.

So: January works, with May the better month by 16 points if the dates can move. If they cannot, nothing here should stop you booking.

Every month in Cartagena

See all twelve months in Cartagena, or where else to go in January.