Weather in Dubrovnik in May

Prime time. May is about as good as Dubrovnik gets. Highs average 20.7 °C, lows 17.4 °C, and rain falls on 10 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

May ranks 3 of 12 in Dubrovnik. Only June scores clearly higher, and the difference is small enough to be settled by price rather than weather.

Rain on 10 days, 2 of them heavy. Enough to need a plan B, not enough to need a plan around it. Nothing specialised needed — this is the month you pack for the trip rather than for the weather.

What the averages hide

Averages flatten a month, and this one hides a few things: it never really gets hot: not one day in an average May reaches 30 °C; the day barely swings — 3.4 °C between the overnight low and the afternoon high. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest May day reached 27.5 °C and the coldest night fell to 10.9 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 47 mm — roughly 63% of the month's rain in one day.

May is moderately variable: 12 mm in the driest year against 162 mm in the wettest, around an average of 75 mm. Roughly two Mays in three land near that average, and the third does something else entirely.

Wind is light at 10.5 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 73%.

How May sits in the year

The month is on the way up: 3.8 °C warmer than April, and June adds another 4.3 °C. Late in the month feels noticeably different from the start of it, which is worth knowing if the trip is short.

Daylight in May

14.6 hours of daylight, gaining 1 hours across the month. That is between Dubrovnik's extremes of 15.3 and 9.1 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

Sea temperature

The sea sits at about 18.6 °C in May — swimmable, but it takes a moment to commit. The sea peaks at 26 °C in August and bottoms out at 14 °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

Busy. Popular without being frantic; book the things you care about, improvise the rest.

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

May in Dubrovnik versus nearby

If Dubrovnik is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Split is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 1 day less rain. Bari is close enough to be a coin toss — 3.2 °C warmer, 2 days less rain.

So: May is effectively as good as it gets here — 5 points behind June, which is inside the margin where the weather stops being the deciding factor and price starts being it.

Every month in Dubrovnik

See all twelve months in Dubrovnik, or where else to go in May.