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Photo by José Ligero Loarte, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Bilbao in May
sweet spot · one of the best months to go
The year in Bilbao
Tap a month for its page
- JanJBilbao in January: ok
- FebFBilbao in February: ok
- MarMBilbao in March: good
- AprABilbao in April: sweet spot
- MayMBilbao in May: sweet spot
- JunJBilbao in June: sweet spot, busy
- JulJBilbao in July: sweet spot, busy
- AugABilbao in August: sweet spot, busy
- SepSBilbao in September: good, busy
- OctOBilbao in October: ok
- NovNBilbao in November: ok
- DecDBilbao in December: ok
- Sweet spot
- Good
- OK
- Avoid
- Busy
Plan this trip
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Flights
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Where to stay
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Luxury
Things to do
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Travel insurance
Check whether your bank card or home insurance already covers this trip.
If the trip needs a visa, the travel agent or visa centre usually sells the cover it asks for.
Mobile data (eSIM)
Your own plan's EU roaming may already cover this.
Renting a pocket Wi-Fi is the other common way to stay connected.
These are sites people in book with. Each opens in a new tab, on the site's own pages.
The numbers
| Daily high | 21°C |
|---|---|
| Nightly low | 12°C |
| Feels like, afternoon | 21°C |
| Rainy days, 1 mm or more | 11 · 84 mm |
| Humidity | 79% |
| Sunshine | 10.1 h/day |
| Daylight | 14.7 h/day |
| Days over 35°C | 0 |
| Crowds | 94 / 100, higher is quieter |
Ten-year averages for this calendar month. A rainy day is one with at least 1 mm of rain, as a weather station counts it. The model these figures come from drizzles more than a rain gauge, the more so the warmer the month, so its days count from 2 mm, rising to 5 mm in the hottest.
Weather read at the Guggenheim: ten years of ERA5 and ERA5-Land reanalysis, through Open-Meteo's open data.
How busy it gets
Public holidays in May
Holidays crowd a place out and push fares up around them; they count toward the crowd score above.
Bilbao in pictures
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Basotxerri, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Basotxerri, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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José Ligero Loarte, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
What to pack
- Warm layers for the evenings, which drop to about 12°C.
- A packable rain jacket for the 11 or so rainy days.
- Sun protection: about 10 hours of sunshine a day.
- Humidity averages 79%; breathable fabrics dry faster.
Each line is a threshold over the ten-year figures above, not advice from anywhere else.
Before you go
Type C and F plugs at 230 V. Drives on the right. The currency is the Euro. No UK Foreign Office advice against travel. Global Affairs Canada: Exercise a high degree of caution. US State Department: Level 2: Exercise Increased Caution. Everything for Spain: cost of living, languages, emergency numbers and health.
On arrival in Bilbao: the apps, paying, getting around, tipping and the emergency numbers.
May elsewhere
In May from
The other months at Bilbao
Links marked Ad pay us a commission if you book through one, at no extra cost to you. That does not affect the numbers on this page, which are computed before any link is built.