Weather in Madrid in December

Shoulder season. December sits in between. You will get good days and you will lose some. Highs sit at 10.8 °C and the day is short; this is an indoors-with-excursions month, not an outdoors-all-day one.

December ranks 10 of 12 — near the bottom of Madrid's year. September is the month that works, and the swing between the two is 39 points, which is a different holiday rather than a slightly better one.

Rain on 7 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 10.8 °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: 11 nights fall below freezing. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest December day reached 18 °C and the coldest night fell to -7.9 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 26 mm — roughly 65% of the month's rain in one day.

December is moderately variable: 6 mm in the driest year against 104 mm in the wettest, around an average of 40 mm. Roughly two Decembers in three land near that average, and the third does something else entirely.

Wind is light at 7.6 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity runs at 83%, which at 10.8 °C means damp rather than muggy — the kind of cold that gets into a coat and stays there.

How December sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 14.3 °C in November, 10.8 here, 10.2 in January. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much.

Daylight in December

December sits at the dark end of Madrid's year — 9.3 hours of daylight against 15 at midsummer, holding steady all month. Sightseeing days are genuinely shorter, and an itinerary built for summer will not fit.

An inland climate

With no coast nearby, the year swings a fair way — 33.5 °C between the warmest afternoons and the coldest nights, wider than any coastal city at this latitude would manage.

How busy it gets

Shoulder. The value months — prices ease off and you get the place closer to itself.

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

December in Madrid versus nearby

If Madrid is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Valladolid is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, the same number of rain days. Zaragoza is a better bet in December — 2.4 °C warmer, 2 days less rain.

So: December is a compromise. September is 29 points better and is what Madrid is actually like at its best — worth moving the trip for if that is possible, and worth adjusting expectations for if it is not.

Every month in Madrid

See all twelve months in Madrid, or where else to go in December.