The best time to visit Amsterdam

The standard advice is the same everywhere: come in spring for the tulips, or in September and October for the shoulder season. What you will not find in any of them is a single number for how crowded those months actually are, or how often it actually rains.

That gap is what this page fills. The Dutch keep excellent records and publish them for free. The national weather service has the daily observations from Schiphol going back decades, and the national statistics office publishes how many people slept in an Amsterdam hotel every single month. Put the two next to each other and the picture changes.

So we did. What comes out disagrees with the consensus on two of its three main claims.

Amsterdam month by month, measured

Everything below is calculated, not copied. The rain days are counted one day at a time from the daily record, using the standard threshold of one millimetre. The occupancy index sets the busiest month of the year at 100 so you can compare months without needing to hold seven-figure numbers in your head.

Daylight, not rain, is what ruins a winter trip

On 15 December the sun sets in Amsterdam at 16:27 and the day lasts 7.7 hours. On 15 June it sets at 22:04 and the day lasts 16.8. That is a difference of nine hours of usable time, and it is the largest single variable on this page. December gets described as "cold and dark". None of them gives the number.

Daylight is not the same thing as sunshine hours, and the two get confused constantly. Sunshine hours measure how long the sun was actually visible; daylight measures how long it was above the horizon at all. December has 52 hours of the first and roughly 238 of the second. You can plan around darkness. You cannot plan around cloud.

We calculated the daylight figures rather than looking them up, using the standard solar algorithm for Amsterdam's latitude on the 15th of each month. It is arithmetic anyone can reproduce, which is the point.

The wind figure matters more here than almost anywhere

Amsterdam is a city you are supposed to see from a bicycle or a boat, and both of those are wind-dependent in a way that walking is not. February averages 5.8 m/s with 8.4 windy days a month, where a windy day is a daily mean of 7.0 m/s or more. August and September average 4.2 with two.

That is close to a 40 per cent difference in the average, and it lands on the one activity the city is famous for. If a February guided bike tour sounds charming, the honest framing is that you have a one-in-four chance of a day when it is work rather than pleasure.

The frost column is there for the same reason a monthly mean is not: in a maritime climate the average never looks dramatic. January reads 7.0 degrees as an average high, which sounds mild, and then has 9.4 nights below zero. The average hides the thing you would pack for.

June: as dry as April and May, and considerably warmer

June has 8.6 rain days, within a tenth of April and May, the two driest months of the year. It has 250 hours of sunshine, four short of May's annual peak. And it is the least crowded month of the entire April to October stretch, at 89 against April's 92, May's 90, July's 100 and October's 91.

Dry, sunny, warm enough for the terraces at 21.8 degrees, and emptier than the months either side of it. On the numbers there is no argument: if you can choose, choose June.

The reason it gets skipped is probably that it falls between the two things guides are built around. It is after the tulips, so the spring articles ignore it, and before the school holidays, so the summer articles ignore it too. The guides skip it almost without exception.

If you do get a wet day

Eight or nine rain days a month means that even in the best month you have a reasonable chance of one. The thing worth knowing is that a walking food tour is the activity least ruined by it: you are outside for ten minutes at a time between indoor stops, and they run in the rain.

We priced nine of them from six operators, and the short version is that the cheapest is also the longest and the best reviewed. The full comparison, including the finding that one tour costs 79 euros on the operator's own site and 94 on Viator, is in the food tour guide.

October is the worst trade in the calendar

October runs at 91 on the occupancy index. April runs at 92. In terms of how many people are in the city, they are the same month. The weather is not remotely the same.

April has 8.5 rain days and 222 hours of sun. October has 13 rain days and 117 hours of sun. You get April's crowds with something much closer to November's weather: it rains on roughly two days in five, and the amount of daylight you can actually use collapses.

If someone has told you October is a clever shoulder-season choice for Amsterdam, the occupancy figures do not support it. It is a busy month that happens to be wet.

September is wetter than July

This one caught us out, because we had written the opposite before checking. September averages 93 mm of rain across 10.9 days. July averages 67 mm across 10.5 days. September also has 179 hours of sun against July's 238, a difference of nearly two hours a day.

September does have a real argument in its favour, and it is the honest one: at 84 it is genuinely the quietest month of the warm half of the year. If what you want is fewer people and you do not mind the weather turning, it earns its reputation. Just not for the reason it usually gets given.

Changing month barely fixes the crowds

The busiest month of the year, July, sees 2.02 million hotel overnight stays. The quietest, January, sees 1.13 million. That is a ratio of 1.79 to one across the whole calendar, which is a much flatter curve than the advice implies.

Narrow it to the months most people will actually consider, April to October, and the index only moves between 84 and 100. Shifting your trip from July to September buys you a sixteen per cent reduction in the number of people in town. It does not buy you an empty Rijksmuseum.

The honest version of the crowd advice is this: if you want Amsterdam genuinely quiet, go in January or February and accept about eight hours of daylight and rain on one day in two. Everything between April and October is a busy city.

Every month, one by one

The three sections above argue a case. This one does not: it is the whole calendar, in order, with the figures from both tables and the one thing each month is actually good or bad for. If you have already picked your dates and just want to know what you are walking into, start here.

January: the emptiest month, and the windiest

At 56 on the occupancy index this is as quiet as Amsterdam gets, by a clear margin over February's 60. You pay for it with 8.2 hours of daylight, 13.8 rain days, 9.4 nights of frost and 63 hours of sunshine in the entire month, which works out at about two hours a day.

It is also the windiest month for windy days specifically: 9.1 of them. Come in January for museums and brown cafes with the city to yourself, not for anything involving a bicycle. The Light Festival runs until 17 January, which is the one thing the darkness is genuinely good for.

February: the same empty city with twice the sun

February has 107 hours of sunshine against January's 63, and an occupancy index of 60 against 56. Nearly double the sun for four points more people, and an extra hour and three quarters of daylight. If you are set on a winter trip, February is straightforwardly the better January.

The catch is wind: at 5.8 m/s it is the windiest month of the year on the average, and frost nights are identical to January at 9.4. It is also the driest of the four winter months at 11.4 rain days.

March: the month the city refills

Occupancy jumps from 60 to 76, the largest month-on-month rise in the calendar. Daylight goes from 9.9 hours to 11.8 and sunshine from 107 hours to 169. March is where Amsterdam stops being a winter city.

It is not spring yet, whatever the prices suggest: 5.5 nights of frost, an average high of 11 degrees and half a day in the whole month that reaches 20. Keukenhof opens on 18 March in 2027, which is why the second half of the month behaves like April.

April: the driest month, and the second busiest

April is the driest month of the year on both measures, 43 mm across 8.5 days, with 222 hours of sun and 13.9 hours of daylight. It is also running at 92 on the occupancy index, higher than May, June, September and October.

Frost is effectively over at one night a month, and there are three days that reach 20 degrees. This is the tulip month and the King's Day month, and it is priced accordingly. Read the two sections below before you book it.

May: the sunniest month of the year

254 hours of sunshine is the annual peak, four more than June, with the same 8.5 rain days as April and 15.7 hours of daylight. Occupancy is 90. There are 10.6 days that reach 20 degrees, against April's 3.1.

Keukenhof closes on 9 May in 2027, so the first third of the month still has the gardens and the last two thirds do not. If the tulips are not the point, the back half of May is one of the best fortnights in the Amsterdam year.

June: covered above, and the longest days

The full argument is in the section above. What belongs here are the two figures that are not in it: June has 16.8 hours of daylight, more than July, and the sun does not set until 22:04. It also has the fewest windy days of the year, 1.9.

July: the busiest month, and wetter than June

The occupancy index tops out at 100 here, on 2.02 million hotel overnight stays. July has 10.5 rain days against June's 8.6, and 238 hours of sun against 250. It is warmer, at 22.9 degrees, with 25.8 days reaching 20.

So July buys you one extra degree and six extra warm days, and costs you two rain days, twelve hours of sunshine and eleven points of occupancy against the month before it. That is the trade, stated plainly.

August: the warmest, and the stillest

23.2 degrees and 26.9 days reaching 20 make August the warmest month on both counts. It is also the calmest, at 4.2 m/s with 2.1 windy days, which makes it the month for the boat or the bike if that is what you came for.

Against that: 84 mm of rain, the most of any summer month, and an occupancy index of 99. Daylight has already dropped to 14.7 hours from June's 16.8.

September: covered above, and the least wind

The full argument, including the finding that it is wetter than July, is in the section above. The figure that argues for it and is not up there: at 4.2 m/s with 2.5 windy days, September ties August as the calmest month of the year, and it does it with sixteen points fewer people in town.

October: covered above, and the light goes

The occupancy argument is in the section above. What compounds it: daylight falls from September's 12.7 hours to 10.7, sunset moves back to 18:47, and sunshine collapses from 179 hours to 117. October is the month the Amsterdam winter starts, at April's crowd levels.

November: the wettest month there is

15.7 rain days is the highest count of any month, higher than December and higher than January. Sunshine is 75 hours, about two and a half a day, and daylight is down to 8.8 hours with sunset at 16:49.

Occupancy drops to 80, so it is genuinely quieter than October at 91 while being only marginally wetter in millimetres, 96 against 94. Between the two, November is the better deal, which is not an argument either of them wins outright. The Light Festival opens on 26 November in 2026.

December: the worst weather, and not the fewest people

December has the least daylight of the year at 7.7 hours, the least sunshine at 52 hours, the earliest sunset at 16:27, and an occupancy index of 77. That is higher than March, which has half again as much daylight and more than three times the sunshine. People are not coming for the weather, and the city prices accordingly.

Six nights of frost, 13.8 rain days, 8.4 windy days. The Light Festival runs from 26 November 2026 to 17 January 2027 in its fifteenth edition, and it is the honest reason to accept all of the above: it is a festival that only works because it gets dark at half four. The other December date that moves a plan is the 31st, because New Year's Eve stops the transport network for five hours and closes Centraal entirely.

What the tulip season actually is

Keukenhof opens on 18 March 2027 and closes on 9 May, which is 53 days open and 312 shut, and that constraint governs the whole spring. Those are the dates published on the gardens' own site, checked on 15 September 2026. But the fields most people are picturing are not inside the gardens: they are the commercial bulb fields around Lisse and Hillegom, and they peak on temperature, not on the calendar.

Getting there is its own question, and the answers online contradict each other because the gardens sit at four different distances depending on where you start. That is measured in the guide to reaching Keukenhof, along with the weather at Lisse itself, which is not the same as Amsterdam.

A warm March can put the best week in early April; a cold one can push it past the closing date. April being the driest month of the year helps, but booking a tulip trip more than about six weeks out is a bet on the weather rather than a plan.

One number makes the risk concrete. March still averages 5.5 nights of frost and exactly half a day in the whole month that reaches 20 degrees. The gardens open on the 18th, in a month that is still meteorologically winter, and the fields outside them do not care what the opening date says.

The one date to check before you book

King's Day, 27 April, is the largest street party in the country. If that is what you came for it is superb. If it is not, you have booked a city break into a festival: the canals close to normal boat traffic, the museums keep shorter hours, and rooms are gone months in advance.

It sits inside the driest, brightest fortnight of the Amsterdam year, which is exactly why it catches people out. Check the date against your dates before anything else.