Best Time to Visit Caminito del Rey: Month, Time of Day & Closures
April and May are the best time for a first visit to Caminito del Rey, with October the autumn alternative. Only 11 Mondays are open in 2026, and the path can shut at short notice for weather.
If your dates are already fixed, check your own date below for the conditions at the gorge, the operator's schedule for that day, and whether tickets for it are on sale yet.
A quieter month does not mean a quieter walk at Caminito del Rey. The operator admits the same maximum number of people on every day it opens, and its own ten-year report describes the spread of visits across the months as almost even.
If you are still choosing your Málaga dates, choose the month for three other things: the heat on a walk that runs three to four hours with no shade and no way off it, the chance of a weather closure, and how far ahead you have to buy a ticket. If they are already booked, the hour you take is the decision left to you.
The short answer
Caminito del Rey opens all year but not every day. Heat is the biggest seasonal difference: three to four hours on foot, almost all outdoors, with no way off once you start. Most Mondays are closed, and so are 24, 25 and 31 December and 1 January. It can also shut at short notice for heavy rain or strong wind, and it closed for two days of extreme heat in August 2025.
April and May are best for a first visit: average daily highs of 21.4 °C and 24.3 °C at Málaga Airport, the nearest station with published figures. October is the autumn alternative at 24.1 °C, though already wetter.
November to March is cooler for walking, but wetter, and the last entry is usually earlier. The same station averages 100 mm of rain in both November and December, and most of the operator’s recent closure announcements have fallen between November and March.
Book as soon as your dates go on sale: tickets come in large batches, not day by day, and 68 per cent of one sold in about twelve hours. Whatever month you come, take the earliest slot: in summer it keeps the walk out of the afternoon heat, in winter it leaves the daylight the operator asks you to allow for. No month is much quieter: the operator’s report says visits are spread almost evenly across the months.
- Best overall, dates still open
- April and May
- The autumn alternative, wetter
- October
- Cool walking, wettest months
- November to March
- Summer trip already booked
- The first slot of the morning
- Best time of day, every month
- The earliest slot available
- Check for your own date
- Heat · wind · rain · tickets
- Average daily high, July and August 30.5 °C and 30.8 °C
- Time on foot, entrance to exit 3 to 4 hours
- Rainfall, November and December 100 mm each, the wettest months
Temperature and rainfall are measured at Málaga Airport, on the coast about 40 km from the gorge and the nearest station for which AEMET publishes normals. Walking times are the operator's own.
Check Availability
Check the conditions for your date
What this shows
Pick a date above and this card reads the forecast for the gorge itself, at 36.93°N 4.77°W, rather than for Málaga on the coast 40 km away. Beyond the forecast window it falls back to the 1991–2020 average for the same point and says so.
- Open or closed
- Open most days. Most Mondays are closed — in 2026 the operator opened eleven, all of them between 13 July and 2 November — and it closes on 24, 25 and 31 December and on 1 January.
- Entry times
- Entry is by timed slot. The winter timetable admits walkers until the early afternoon; the summer one runs later. The operator moves to winter hours at the end of October and publishes no fixed changeover date.
- Conditions
- Highest temperature at the gorge, wind gusts — the condition the operator warns ticket holders about in advance — rain, and the sunset time, because the public-use rules ask you to allow for the light left after your slot.
- Tickets
- Whether your date falls inside the release the operator currently has on sale.
It reads published schedules and a weather forecast. It does not predict a closure and it cannot see live ticket stock: the operator decides on the day and announces closures by SMS, email and its Telegram channel.
Heat, closures and tickets
Three things move through the year. A fourth, the one most people plan around, does not.
Heat is the big one. The published walking time is three to four hours from the car park to the exit: roughly fifty minutes on the access path down to the control booth, ten more to the walkway gate, 150 minutes inside the controlled section, then fifteen minutes out to the booth at El Chorro and fifteen more to the railway station. Almost all of that is in the open. Once you pass the gate the route is one-way, and there is no way off it, no toilet and nowhere to stop and eat. That is why the operator asks every visitor to carry at least 1.5 litres of water and singles out sunscreen for the summer months.
Weather closures are the second. The path is in a mountain gorge and the operator shuts it when conditions make the walkways unsafe. Its own announcements cluster in the wetter half of the year, and its ten-year report links the lower attendance in November, December, January and February partly to days lost to rain.
Ticket supply is the third, and it gets settled months before your trip. Entry is by timed slot and the site runs close to its capacity all year, so the operator releases tickets in a few large batches, not as a rolling window. There were two of them in 2026.
How busy it feels does not move, and that is the part that catches people out. Because the daily cap is the same on every open day, the number of people on the path with you in February is much the same as in May. The operator’s ten-year report describes the spread of visits across the months as almost even, and says the site stays practically at its maximum carrying capacity. So the familiar advice to visit in the shoulder season for a quieter walk does not apply here. A quieter month buys you a better chance of getting the date and the slot you wanted, not more room on the walkway.
Month by month at the gorge
The figures below come from Málaga Airport, on the coast about 40 km away and at sea level, which is the nearest station for which AEMET publishes normals. There is no published climate series for El Chorro or Ardales itself, so read the temperatures as the shape of the year, not as a reading from the gorge.
| Month | Average daily high | Rainfall | Days with rain | Daylight | What that means for the walk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 16.8 °C | 69 mm | 5.8 | 9h 54m | Cool and pleasant on a clear day; the winter timetable stops admitting walkers in the early afternoon |
| February | 17.7 °C | 60 mm | 4.8 | 10h 50m | Much the same, and the easiest month of the year for getting the slot you want |
| March | 19.6 °C | 52 mm | 4.0 | 11h 55m | Drying out, though closure announcements still reach into this month |
| April | 21.4 °C | 44 mm | 4.5 | 13h 07m | Comfortable walking weather and long enough afternoons; Easter pushes demand |
| May | 24.3 °C | 20 mm | 3.1 | 14h 08m | The driest of the spring months, and the best all-round conditions of the year |
| June | 28.1 °C | 6 mm | 0.8 | 14h 41m | Hot by mid-morning on the exposed sections; take the earliest slot |
| July | 30.5 °C | 0 mm | 0.1 | 14h 28m | The first slot of the day is worth more than any other choice you make |
| August | 30.8 °C | 6 mm | 0.5 | 13h 36m | The hottest month, and the one in which the operator has closed the path for heat |
| September | 28.2 °C | 20 mm | 2.1 | 12h 27m | Still hot early in the month; the last week is genuinely good |
| October | 24.1 °C | 57 mm | 4.4 | 11h 17m | Warm and much wetter than September; the winter timetable begins at the end of the month |
| November | 20.1 °C | 100 mm | 5.6 | 10h 13m | One of the two wettest months, and the start of the closure season |
| December | 17.5 °C | 100 mm | 6.6 | 9h 39m | The other wettest month, plus four fixed closed dates around Christmas and New Year |
Two things stand out. The first is how sharply autumn turns: September takes 20 mm of rain and October 57 mm, so the gap between the last week of September and the last week of October is much wider than a month of cooling suggests. The second is that daylight never constrains this walk. Even in December there are more than nine and a half hours of it, which is ample for a three-to-four-hour route. Daylight is a question about the hour you book rather than the month you travel.
The best time of day to walk it
Entry is by timed slot, in groups admitted every ten minutes, and you choose your slot when you buy. That makes the hour one of the few things about this trip you fully control.
Take the earliest slot you can get, and take it especially in summer. Temperatures rise through the day, the access path and the walkways are open to the sun, and an early start leaves the rest of the day for the shuttle back and the journey to Málaga. You also need to be at the entrance at least half an hour before your slot, and to have walked fifty minutes to reach it, so a slot at nine in the morning is a genuinely early start from the coast.
There is a second reason in winter. The operator publishes two timetables, a summer one and a winter one that begins at the end of October, and the winter one stops admitting walkers in the early afternoon. It publishes no date for either changeover, so in March and October the slots on offer are the only reliable guide to which timetable you are booking into. The public-use rules put the obligation on the visitor plainly: allow for the daylight left, given how long the route takes. That obligation attaches to your slot, whichever month you come in.
If you would rather not solve the slot, the shuttle and the drive yourself, the guided tour with hotel pickup from Málaga handles the timing as a package. It is rated 4.86 out of 5 across 18,917 reviews, from $63. Our guided versus self-guided comparison works through the difference in cost and effort.
When the path closes, and what happens to your ticket
The operator closes Caminito del Rey for weather, and it is candid about why the call is hard to make in advance. Its own words: this is “a very particular enclave in which the weather forecast is complicated and very variable”.
Three things matter before you book.
Rain on its own rarely closes it. The operator states that the walk can go ahead in scattered rain, and that any closure is its own decision, taken for safety. Wet weather makes for a duller walk far more often than a cancelled one.
Strong wind is the condition it warns about in advance. Where strong winds are forecast, the operator contacts ticket holders by email, SMS and its Telegram channel. If no notice has arrived 24 hours before your visit, the walk is initially going ahead, which it is careful to say does not rule out a cancellation on the day. No wind speed at which it closes is published anywhere.
Extreme heat closes it too, and that surprises people. On 17 and 18 August 2025 the operator shut the path outright, describing the reason in its own English as the risk of heat stroke. Any planning that treats summer as merely uncomfortable is missing this.
Recent closures give a sense of the pattern, though not a rate, because no register is published. In the operator’s own announcements the dated examples run 29 and 30 October and 13 and 14 November 2024; 28 February and 2, 8, 13 and 18 March 2025; 28 December 2025; and 4, 27 and 28 January and 4, 5 and 7 February 2026. Two further days in late 2024 were lost to repairs after storm damage.
If your date is closed, you are not simply out of pocket. Official tickets cannot normally be changed or refunded, but a closure by the operator is the stated exception: through your account on the booking platform you can move the ticket to another date or request a refund, in either case within four calendar days of the closure notice, under Article 23 of Andalusia’s Decree 10/2003. Asking for the refund gives up the right to exchange. A tour booked through an operator is a separate contract with its own terms, so check those when you book.
The practical instruction is short. Give the operator a mobile number and an email address you will actually read, and check its channels on the morning of your visit.
Getting a ticket: how the releases work
This is the part of the trip that has to be solved earliest. It is why a month can be best and still be unavailable.
Tickets go on sale in a few large batches, not day by day, and in 2026 there were two. Around 125,000 tickets covering visits from 24 March to 28 June 2026, Easter included, were released on 4 December 2025. Around 220,000 covering 30 June to 6 December 2026 followed on 8 April 2026. They do not linger: the Diputación de Málaga reported that 68 per cent of one batch went in roughly twelve hours.
General admission is €10, with a limit of ten tickets per buyer, and the ticket that includes an official guide is €18. When this page was last checked, the platform was offering dates up to 6 December 2026 and said later dates would be released at a later date, with no date published for the next batch.
Two consequences follow. If your travel dates are fixed and fall inside a release that has already opened, book now, before the flights if need be. If they fall beyond it, there is nothing to buy yet, and the useful move is to watch for the release instead of refreshing the calendar. Our tickets guide covers the entrance options and what to try when a date shows as sold out.
Organised tours are the other route in, because operators hold their own allocations. The guided tour with shuttle and water, rated 4.74 out of 5 across 9,139 reviews, from $47, is the one to look at for a hot date, because it hands you the water and the transfer instead of leaving you to carry and arrange both.
What to bring, in any month
The operator’s own requirements do not change with the season, and two of them catch people out.
- At least 1.5 litres of water per person. There is no shop once you are past the gate.
- Closed-toe shoes with grip. Sandals and flip-flops are refused at the entrance.
- Sunscreen, which the rules single out for summer but which the exposed sections earn in spring and autumn too.
- Something to eat before or after, not during. There is nowhere on the walkways to stop.
- A helmet is issued and compulsory; your own is not accepted.
Walking poles, crutches and canes are not allowed, and the minimum age is eight, with photo identification checked at the entrance. Our what to wear guide goes through the footwear rule in detail, and the duration, difficulty and age limit guide covers who finds the route hard.
Getting there on the day you have booked
The slot you buy is for the walkway gate at the northern end, near Ardales, and the route finishes near El Chorro in the south. That asymmetry, not the weather, is what most often goes wrong on the day: the walk is one-way and you have to solve the return yourself. A shuttle bus runs between the two ends, but it is operated by a separate concessionaire, so its timetable is not part of your ticket, so check the current one before you commit to a late slot. Our transport guide from Málaga sets out the train, car and tour options in order.
Questions people ask
What is the best month to visit Caminito del Rey?
April and May are the best overall period, with October the autumn alternative. They are warm without the July and August highs of about 30.5 °C and 30.8 °C at the nearest weather station, and they sit clear of the four wettest months from November to February. Most of the operator's recent closure announcements fall between November and March. October is the one to watch at that end, because rainfall roughly triples between September and October.
What is the best time of day to walk Caminito del Rey?
The earliest entry slot you can book, in any month. Temperatures rise through the day and most of the route is in the open, and an early slot leaves the rest of the day for the walk back, the shuttle and the journey to Málaga. The public-use rules also ask visitors to allow for the daylight left after their slot, which matters most on the winter timetable, when the last entry is in the early afternoon.
Is Caminito del Rey closed on Mondays?
Usually, yes. Most Mondays of the year are closed. In 2026 the operator opened eleven, all of them between 13 July and 2 November: 13 and 27 July, 10, 17 and 24 August, 7, 14 and 21 September, 12 and 19 October, and 2 November. It also closes on 24, 25 and 31 December and on 1 January.
Does Caminito del Rey close when it rains?
Not usually. The operator says the walk can go ahead in scattered rain and that any closure is its own decision, taken for safety. Strong wind is the condition it singles out for advance warning, and it has also closed the path for extreme heat, on 17 and 18 August 2025. There is no published wind speed or temperature at which it closes: the decision is made on the day.
What happens to my ticket if Caminito del Rey closes?
Official tickets cannot normally be changed or refunded, but a closure by the operator is the exception. If it closes your date, you can either move the ticket to another day or ask for a refund, in both cases within four calendar days of the closure notice, through your account on the booking platform. Asking for the refund gives up the right to exchange. Closures are announced by SMS and email to the details you gave when you booked, and on the operator's Telegram channel. A tour booked through an operator has its own separate cancellation terms.
Is Caminito del Rey too hot in summer?
It is manageable on an early slot and uncomfortable on a late one. The walk runs three to four hours from the car park to the exit, almost all of it outdoors, and once you are through the gate there is no way off, no shade to rely on, no toilets and nowhere to stop and eat. The operator requires at least 1.5 litres of water per person and singles out sunscreen for the summer, and it closed the path for two days in August 2025 because of the risk of heat stroke.
When do Caminito del Rey tickets go on sale?
In a few large batches, not as a rolling window. In 2026 there were two. Around 125,000 tickets for visits between 24 March and 28 June 2026 were released on 4 December 2025, and around 220,000 for 30 June to 6 December 2026 followed on 8 April 2026. They go quickly: the Diputación de Málaga reported that 68 per cent of one batch went in about twelve hours. When this page was last checked, dates after 6 December 2026 had not yet been released.
Is Caminito del Rey worth visiting in winter?
Yes, with two caveats. The gorge looks much the same in February as in July, average daily highs at the nearest station are still 16.8 °C in January and 17.7 °C in February, and the walk itself is unchanged. The caveats are that the winter timetable stops admitting walkers in the early afternoon, and that most of the operator's recent closure announcements have fallen between November and March.
How we know
Opening days, timetables, distances and walking times come from the operator’s own platform at caminitodelrey.info: its schedule page, its frequently asked questions, and the public-use recommendations issued as Decree 2026/3306 of 6 May 2026 by the Diputación de Málaga. The segment times, the 2,955 m between the walkway gates and the water and footwear requirements are quoted from that decree.
The closure rules and the remedy come from the operator’s purchase conditions and its “redeem tickets due to closure” page, which cite Article 23 of Decree 10/2003 of Andalusia. The dated closure examples are the operator’s own announcements on its Telegram channel, read on 21 September 2026.
Visitor numbers and the statement about seasonality come from Caminito del Rey: análisis y evolución del entorno 2015–2024, published by the operator with the Diputación de Málaga. It gives 329,560 visits in 2024 and 329,197 in 2023, describes the monthly distribution as almost even and says visits stay practically at the maximum carrying capacity.
Ticket releases and prices come from the Diputación de Málaga’s communications office for the 8 April 2026 release, and from Andalucía Información for the 4 December 2025 release and the twelve-hour sell-through figure.
Climate figures are AEMET’s published normals for Málaga Aeropuerto, station 6155A, at 7 m altitude, for the reference period 1981–2010. Daylight is computed for the gorge itself, at 36.93° N 4.77° W, using the standard solar-position method, and is accurate to about a minute.
Tour ratings and review counts were read from the live GetYourGuide listings on 21 September 2026; prices come from this site’s own offers data.
Where this evidence stops
These numbers cannot tell you what the temperature will be in the gorge. AEMET publishes no station normals for El Chorro or Ardales, so the table above is a coastal station at sea level, 40 km away, and its reference period is 1981–2010 rather than the current 1991–2020 one, because that is what AEMET publishes for this station. We could not reach aemet.es directly and read the table from the Internet Archive’s copy of 14 January 2026.
We do not have a monthly visitor series, only annual totals and the operator’s description of the monthly spread, so this page does not rank the months against each other for how busy they are. There is no published register of weather closures either, which is why the dated examples above are given as examples and not as a rate: they are what the operator’s channel still shows, not a complete list. Nothing here is a forecast of whether your own date will be closed, and no source we could find publishes the wind speed or the temperature at which the operator decides.
The operator’s perennial schedule page and the Diputación’s 2026 season announcement give different first and last admission times, and neither publishes a date for the switch to winter hours beyond “the end of October”. For that reason this page gives no exact last-admission time; the booking platform shows the real slot grid for your date. No release date has been published for dates after 6 December 2026.
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