Weather in Gothenburg in May

Shoulder season. May is shoulder season in Gothenburg — cheaper, quieter, and a genuine gamble. Highs sit at 14 °C and the day is short; this is an indoors-with-excursions month, not an outdoors-all-day one.

May ranks 4 of 12 in Gothenburg: past the worst of the year but short of July, which is the month to book if the dates are open.

Rain on 12 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 °C the difference between a good day and a miserable one is entirely down to what you are wearing.

What the averages hide

Averages flatten a month, and this one hides a few things: the day barely swings — 5.3 °C between the overnight low and the afternoon high. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest May day reached 25.2 °C and the coldest night fell to 2.3 °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 116 mm against 19 mm in the driest. In a month this wet, even a tame spread is a lot of rain in absolute terms — the 64 mm average is a reasonable planning figure, not a promise.

Wind is light at 8.7 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity runs at 81%, which at 14 °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: 4.7 °C warmer than April, and June adds another 3.3 °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

16.6 hours of daylight, gaining 2 hours across the month. That is between Gothenburg's extremes of 18 and 6.6 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

An inland climate

Despite being inland, the year stays fairly even: 21.2 °C between the year's warmest afternoons and coldest nights.

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 Gothenburg versus nearby

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

So: May works, with July the better month by 11 points if the dates can move. If they cannot, nothing here should stop you booking.

Every month in Gothenburg

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