The best time of year to visit every country in the world (in one table)

There are a lot of reasons that people travel at non-ideal times. Holidays, work, school calendars, fare-sales, etc. For some people, off-season travel affords the opportunity for less crowds, cheaper hotels and unexpected discoveries.

I’ve had some incredible experiences travelling in the off-season. A morning in Kyoto in January immediately comes to mind. I’d been fighting wind and slightly above-freezing rain for three days trying to explore the city. Waking up before sunrise on my last morning, I found the rain had turned to giant, soft snowflakes. I spent the next several hours exploring the historic district of Higashiyama in a snow globe. I was completely by myself amongst the shrines, temples and gardens, the snow muffling any sound except for the distant chanting of monks and click of wooden water features. It’s a day that I’ll never forget and one that seared a love of Japan into my bones. Low-season has its merits.

That said, I’d never suggest that someone visit Japan for the first time in January (unless they’re planning to ski). Much of the country is cold, dark, rainy and windy, often making exploration difficult. Are there still treasures to be found? Absolutely…and it’s still an enchanting country. However, there’s simply more comfortable times of year to be there.

But which times are those?

Why we built this table

My wife is a college professor and much of our travel availability is based around the summer and school breaks. Unfortunately, much of the world is hot, crowded or rainy during our North American summer, and her spring and winter breaks can be an awkward time as well. Because of that, I’ve been wanting a summary of the “best” times of year to visit the various parts of the world. There are many opinions and resources out there, but there’s not a lot of good references that can be easily paged through and sorted by both geographical area and month. That’s what we’re aiming to build here.

We put a lot of effort towards helping our readers earn points and miles. At the same time, we also want to show the best ways to redeem those points and miles once they have them by spotlighting opportunities to get outsized value or grab hard to find hotels and award flights. We hope that this table will be another resource to help folks strategize and build imagination for the many ways that points and miles can enrich their travel.

“Best” should not be read as “the only time that people will enjoy.”

Any “best” list is, by nature, subjective…to some degree, this table is as well. Everyone has different goals and preferences when they travel and nice weather or lower crowds might not be high on that list. Look at the recommendations below as a starting point to planning, as opposed to being an admonition to not travel to a given country or region outside of the indicated months. I’m sure there will be some who disagree with some of the recommendations (“I love Saudi Arabia in the summer!”). As always, we’d love to hear any input folks might have.

Methodology

In order to make this table, we cross-referenced best time of year travel recommendations from: Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, Bradt, Fodor’s and Travel + Leisure, mixing in regional travel sites where appropriate. The goal was to find months of overlapping agreement between all of these “authorities,” prioritizing optimal weather and moderate crowds. This isn’t always possible and it certainly isn’t complete. For example, October is a great time to visit much of China, but not “Golden Week,” the first-ish week of the month when almost the whole country is on vacation at the same time.

There’s currently 270 entries here and we hope to grow that over time to try and capture as much specificity as possible. Many countries have different regions with varying optimal times to visit depending on elevation, latitude, exposure to oceanic effects and so on. We’d like to be able to continue to refine this guide accordingly. We also hope to eventually add an interactive map that shows options for award-booking as well.

Table of the “best” times to visit every country in the world

This table can be searched by region or country by entering the name into the search box. It can then be sorted by month by simply clicking the up/down arrows. Alternatively, you can start by choosing the month and scrolling down (but it will be a long list). The default display is 10 results at a time, but that can be changed to 25, 50 or 100. There is a scroll bar at the bottom that allows for viewing every month of the year (mobile users can scroll left to right by touch).

*A country’s inclusion on this list doesn’t mean we think right now is an appropriate time for tourists to go there. Please use good judgment and check travel advisories before heading out.

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