Best Time to Visit Corfu Island

Corfu has a longer usable season than most Greek islands and a wetter winter than almost any of them. Deciding when to go is mainly a trade between heat, sea temperature, crowds and price.

High summer: July and August

Daytime highs average around 32°C in July and August, and these are also the driest months, with only 15-20 mm of rain each. The sea peaks near 26°C in August. This is when the island is at its fullest and most expensive: Greek and Italian holidaymakers arrive in numbers in August, flights and ferries cost the most, and the small bays on the north-east coast fill up by mid-morning. Afloat the calendar shifts a little, because the sea warms weeks after the air does, and the best time to charter a gulet in Corfu runs from late June to mid-September rather than from the first warm days of spring.

Shoulder months: May, June, September, October

June and the first half of September are the practical compromise: highs of about 29°C and 28°C, sea temperatures around 24-25°C, and rates well below August. May and October are cooler, with highs near 24°C, greener hillsides and better conditions for walking inland; the sea is about 20°C in May and still around 22°C in October. Seasonal hotels and tavernas in the resorts begin closing from mid-October.

Winter: November to March

Corfu is one of the wettest corners of Greece, with roughly 1,000 mm of rain a year, most of it falling between November and January; November and December each average close to 200 mm. Highs sit between 14°C and 16°C. Most resort infrastructure shuts down, but Corfu Town works year round and stays connected through Athens. Winter also brings the Alkyonides, the halcyon days: spells of still, sunny weather that fall anywhere between mid-December and mid-February and most often in the second half of January.

Crowds and prices in short

• Peak: mid-July to the end of August. Book flights, cars and boats months ahead.
• Best value with summer weather: June, and the first two weeks of September.
• Quietest while the island is still open: May and early October.
• Effectively closed: November to March, outside Corfu Town.

Dates worth planning around

The Corfu Carnival runs over the three Sundays before Orthodox Lent, usually in late February or early March, and ends with a parade and the burning of an effigy called Sior Carnavalos. Orthodox Easter is the island's largest event and moves each year: on Holy Saturday, at eleven in the morning, Corfiots throw large clay pots, the botides, from the balconies of the old town. Rooms in Corfu Town sell out for that week well in advance.

Two civic dates bring parades. The 25th of March is the national holiday marking the start of the 1821 revolution, though Corfu was under British rule at the time; the island was Venetian, then French, then British and never Ottoman, and joined Greece only in 1864, which is why the 21st of May, the anniversary of the union of the Ionian Islands, is the bigger local occasion.

Packing follows the same calendar: sun protection and light clothing from June to September, and a light waterproof at any other time of year.