Weather in Gdańsk in May

A good month. May is a solid month to be in Gdańsk. Highs sit at 14.8 °C and the day is short; this is an indoors-with-excursions month, not an outdoors-all-day one.

May ranks 5 of 12 in Gdańsk: past the worst of the year but short of August, which is the month to book if the dates are open.

Rain on 10 days, 1 of them heavy. Enough to need a plan B, not enough to need a plan around it. Layers, and a genuinely waterproof outer — at 14.8 °C the difference between a good day and a miserable one is entirely down to what you are wearing.

What the averages hide

The averages here are honest — no hidden extremes worth planning around. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest May day reached 24.7 °C and the coldest night fell to 1 °C.

May is statistically steady but not small: the year-to-year variation is modest in relative terms, yet the wettest May on record still delivered 102 mm against 25 mm in the driest. In a month this wet, even a tame spread is a lot of rain in absolute terms — the 54 mm average is a reasonable planning figure, not a promise.

Wind is light at 12.6 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity runs at 80%, which at 14.8 °C means damp rather than muggy — the kind of cold that gets into a coat and stays there.

How May sits in the year

The month is on the way up: 5 °C warmer than April, and June adds another 3.7 °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

16 hours of daylight, gaining 1.7 hours across the month. That is between Gdańsk's extremes of 17.2 and 7.4 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

Sea temperature

The sea sits at about 8.4 °C in May — too cold to swim without a wetsuit. The sea peaks at 18.8 °C in August and bottoms out at 3 °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 Gdańsk versus nearby

If Gdańsk is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Warsaw is a better bet in May — 4.8 °C warmer, 3 days more rain. Szczecin is close enough to be a coin toss — 2.4 °C warmer, 1 day more rain.

So: May works, with August the better month by 10 points if the dates can move. If they cannot, nothing here should stop you booking.

Every month in Gdańsk

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