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Photo by Fawaz.tairou, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Dakar in January
goodbusy · a good time to go
The year in Dakar
Tap a month for its page
- JanJDakar in January: good, busy
- FebFDakar in February: good
- MarMDakar in March: sweet spot
- AprADakar in April: sweet spot
- MayMDakar in May: sweet spot
- JunJDakar in June: sweet spot
- JulJDakar in July: sweet spot
- AugADakar in August: good
- SepSDakar in September: sweet spot
- OctODakar in October: sweet spot
- NovNDakar in November: good, busy
- DecDDakar in December: good, busy
- 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
Car hire
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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 | 24°C |
|---|---|
| Nightly low | 21°C |
| Feels like, afternoon | 24°C |
| Rainy days, 1 mm or more | 0 · 2 mm |
| Humidity | 63% |
| Sunshine | 10.1 h/day |
| Daylight | 11.4 h/day |
| Crowds | 45 / 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 centre, 39 km from the airport (DSS): ten years of ERA5 and ERA5-Land reanalysis, through Open-Meteo's open data.
How busy it gets
Public holidays in January
Holidays crowd a place out and push fares up around them; they count toward the crowd score above.
Dakar in pictures
What to pack
- Sun protection: about 10 hours of sunshine a day.
Each line is a threshold over the ten-year figures above, not advice from anywhere else.
Before you go
| Cost of living | very cheap — prices run about 36% of the United States' (World Bank, 2025) |
|---|---|
| Currency | West african cfa franc |
| Languages | French, Wolof, Badyara, Balanta |
| Plugs | Type C and E and K, 230 V |
| Driving | On the right |
| Calling code | +221 |
| Travel advice | No advice against travel — UK Foreign Office, updated 2026-05-13 Exercise a high degree of caution — Global Affairs Canada, updated 2026-09-28 Level 1: Exercise Normal Precautions — US State Department, updated 2025-12-01 |
| Health | UK Foreign Office health advice |
Facts from Wikidata (CC0), the UK Foreign Office (Open Government Licence) and the World Bank, refreshed 2026-10-08. The advisory is written for British travellers; entry rules depend on your passport.Travel advice for American readers is the US State Department's (public domain), and for Canadian readers Global Affairs Canada's (Open Government Licence - Canada), each in its own words and written for its own citizens; entry rules depend on your passport.
On arrival in Dakar: the apps, paying, getting around, tipping and the emergency numbers.
January elsewhere
In January from
The other months at Dakar
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