Madeira in December: Weather, Sea Temperature, Crowds and Levada Trail Fees

MADEIRA · DECEMBER · 32.6° N

December is the month Madeira’s numbers argue for and its brochures undersell. At the official Funchal station the average daily high is 69.8°F (21.0°C) and the average low 59.9°F (15.5°C): short sleeves at sea level, a fleece on any road that climbs. Rain comes in the same package, 3.73 inches across the month, which makes December the wettest of the three winter months around it.

What the month takes back is light and water warmth. On the 15th the sun rises at 08:01 and sets at 18:04, about 10 hours 4 minutes of daylight, and the sea off the coast averages 70.3°F. It also took back spontaneity on the trails: since January 1, 2026, every PR-numbered levada and vereda charges a fee and requires a slot booked online.

On this page

• Madeira weather in DecemberHighs near 70°F and 8.6 rain days
• Can you swim in December?Sea surface at 70.3°F
• Levada trail fees and bookingEUR 4.50 and a 30-minute slot
• Crowds, prices and the Funchal tourist taxEUR 2 per person per night, capped at 7
• A two-day plan for 10 hours of daylightDay one uphill, day two at Monte
• December vs November and JanuaryThe three months in one table
• Is December a good time to visit Madeira?Who should come, who should shift
• When is Portugal at its best overall?The 12-month verdict

Every temperature and rain figure below comes from one thermometer: IPMA station 522, in Funchal, 58 meters above the sea on the south coast, on the 1991-2020 normals. That provenance matters more here than in most places. Carry the coastal reading up to Pico do Areeiro and it describes nothing: high ground runs colder and far wetter, and the north coast keeps weather of its own.

Madeira weather in December: average highs, lows and rain days

The file is a station normal from IPMA, the Portuguese weather service, not a reanalysis grid cell: a fixed instrument at a fixed altitude with thirty years behind it. It reads 69.8°F for the average high, 59.9°F for the average low, 3.73 inches of rain. A model that averages one square of ocean, city and mountain would smooth all three toward something no one experiences, and Madeira is the last island where smoothing helps.

Rain touches 8.6 days in an average December, counting any day that records at least 1 mm (0.04 inch). Heavier days are rarer, 3.5 of them clearing 10 mm (0.39 inch). Those are IPMA’s thresholds, not the 0.10-inch line American tables use, so the counts do not swap with a Florida figure. Day to day it reads as two afternoons a week interrupted by a shower, plus close to one day a week when the mountain is not the plan.

Ten degrees separate the average high from the average low, which is a mild day and a cool evening, not two seasons. Altitude is the gap that bites, and our sourced figures put no number on it beyond the warning that high ground is colder and wetter. Pack for two islands: a layer and a shell for the ridge, shoes that cope with wet basalt, and one warm thing for a 60°F night. The packing list handles the rest.

Light is the tightest constraint of the month. Sunrise on December 15 is 08:01 and sunset 18:04 (Madeira keeps UTC in winter), so the usable day runs 10 hours 4 minutes. Trail entry slots are sold in 30-minute blocks from sunrise to sunset, which leaves about twenty of them on a mid-December day against a summer sheet twice as long. The last cable car of the day leaves at 17:45, in the dark half of that window.

Can you swim in Madeira in December? Sea temperature and what it feels like

The water off Madeira averages 70.3°F in December on the 2015-2024 record from the Open-Meteo Marine dataset. One nuance travels with that number: it is the mean of daily maxima, the warmest point of each day, so it sits a shade above a true 24-hour average. Read it as the top of the day’s range, not the temperature at 08:00.

Seventy degrees is a swim rather than a soak. Expect thirty unpleasant seconds, then twenty comfortable minutes, then the point where you want the towel. November’s 73.0°F buys real lounging time in the water and January’s 68.6°F takes it away again, so December sits at the hinge. A shorty wetsuit turns twenty minutes into an hour, and the locals swimming past you at Christmas are not wearing one.

On wind and swell we have nothing to offer: no December wind or wave normal for Madeira sits in the sources at the end, and inventing one would be worse than the silence. What the same files do carry is trail status, published trail by trail and moved by weather and works. On September 8, 2026, PR 1.3 Vereda da Encumeada and PR 4 Levada do Barreiro were restricted while five others were open.

How busy is Madeira in December? Crowds, prices and the demand peak

No monthly occupancy or room-rate index for Madeira sits in the sources listed at the end, so the year’s price cycle gets no invented ranking on this island. Portugal’s national curve is laid out in the 12-month verdict, and the budget arithmetic in what a trip costs. What December does document precisely is its paperwork, and that is where the month gets expensive in attention rather than euros.

Booking is mandatory for every classified trail and can only be done online, through SIMplifica, the regional government’s services portal. It applies the same way to solo walkers, to groups, and to anyone walking with a tour company. The fee is EUR 4.50 per person, or EUR 3 through a company holding an IFCN protocol, and residents of the Autonomous Region are exempt. The Monte sledges sit at the other extreme: no booking exists at all, tickets are same-day and on site, Monday to Saturday, 09:00 to 18:00.

Funchal adds a Taxa Municipal Turística of EUR 2 per person per night, capped at 7 consecutive nights, so EUR 14 per guest at most. It covers every paid overnight stay in the municipality whatever the booking channel, and it starts again after an interrupted stay, which catches anyone splitting a week with two nights elsewhere on the island. Children of 12 and under are exempt on production of an ID, as are visitors with a disability of 60 percent or more and regional residents on proof of tax address.

Money moves one thing in December, and it is the wet afternoon. EUR 18 gets an adult into Monte Palace Tropical Garden, open 09:00 to 18:00 from October to March, with its sculpture museum under a roof until 17:00. EUR 22 gets you up and back on the cable car without the hairpins. That pairing is the difference between a lost day and a good one, and it is the only line on the December budget that reliably repays itself.

Things to do in Madeira in December

Cool air on a climb is what December hands you and July does not. The trails open on September 8, 2026, included PR 1 Vereda do Areeiro, PR 1.2 Vereda do Pico Ruivo, PR 6 Levada das 25 Fontes, PR 6.1 Levada do Risco and PR 3.1 Caminho Real do Monte. Status is published trail by trail and shifts with rain and works, so the list you check the night before is not the list that matters. Check it again with your coffee.

Prices and hours, in the order you would use them. The Funchal to Monte cable car runs 08:45 to 17:45 every day of the year except Christmas Day, at EUR 22 return or EUR 16 one way, free up to age 6 and half price from 7 to 14, with an e-ticket valid 60 days from purchase. Monte Palace Tropical Garden asks EUR 18 for adults, 09:00 to 18:00 in winter, closed on December 25. The wicker sledges cost EUR 30, EUR 40 and EUR 60 for one, two or three riders.

Free, this month, means the exemptions: children up to 14 enter Monte Palace at no charge with an adult, under-7s ride the cable car free, and under-12s escape the nightly tax. The old walk down from Monte no longer belongs on that list, since PR 3.1 is a classified trail and now carries the EUR 4.50 fee and a booked slot. The Botanical Garden Eng. Rui Vieira, on Caminho do Meio at Bom Sucesso, holds over 2,000 exotic species, and its December hours are not in our files. No verified December event dates are either, so none are listed.

Madeira in December: 2-day itinerary and daylight hours

Day one goes uphill, because light rations the day. Slots open at sunrise, 08:01 on the 15th, so take an early one for PR 6 Levada das 25 Fontes or PR 1.2 Vereda do Pico Ruivo and be walking by 09:00, when the coast is still near its 59.9°F low and the ridge is colder again. Come down for a 14:00 lunch at sea level. Sunset at 18:04 leaves one hour of Funchal seafront in decent light, and room for nothing more ambitious.

Day two starts on the 08:45 cable car, opens Monte Palace at 09:00, and saves the museum for late afternoon, since it shuts at 17:00 while the garden runs to 18:00. Sledge tickets are sold on site for the same day only, and the office can close early when the queue or the sky turns, so join it before lunch. If the ground is wet, the three-person ride does not run: walk down, or ride back for EUR 16 and give the wet hours to the tile panels indoors.

Madeira in December vs November and January

All three columns come from the same IPMA station and the same 1991-2020 period, so they compare cleanly. December is the wet one: 3.73 inches over 8.6 days, against 3.16 inches over 7.3 days in November and 2.64 inches over 6.2 days in January. Air temperature slides gently, 73.0°F to 69.8°F to 68.0°F. The sea drops harder, 73.0°F to 70.3°F to 68.6°F, and that 4.4-degree fall from November to January is what a swimmer feels first.

Shift four weeks earlier and you buy 3.2 degrees of daytime warmth, 2.7 degrees of sea, an hour more light and 1.3 fewer rain days, at the cost of the winter garden timetable. Shift four weeks later and January hands over the driest sheet of the three while taking the water down to 68.6°F. The full case for each sits in Madeira in November and Madeira in January.

Is December a good time to visit Madeira?

Yes for walkers, garden people and anyone who wants 70-degree days without a summer crowd around the levada. No for a beach-first week: 3.73 inches of rain, 8.6 wet days and 10 hours of light are not the raw material of a lounging holiday, and 70.3°F water is a swim you time rather than one you forget about.

If rain is what would ruin the trip, move to January, which drops to 2.64 inches over 6.2 days for the price of two degrees of air and 1.7 of sea. If the water is the point, move to November instead, where 73.0°F still counts as swimming weather and the trail slots stretch across a longer day.

One thing belongs to December alone: it is the only month that puts the cable car’s single annual closing day and the garden’s December 25 shutter inside an ordinary week of your trip, which is a question no other month makes you ask.

The last word

The decision that shapes a December week is made before takeoff: pick the trail, buy the EUR 4.50 slot on SIMplifica for the earliest half of a day, and leave the second day loose enough to trade the ridge for Monte when the sky says so. Monte Palace spreads across 70,000 square meters of planting, tile panels and sculpture, and school groups walk in free, which makes it the rare wet-weather fallback that does not feel like a consolation. Keep the receipt for the tax cap at EUR 14 while you are at it.

Sources & data for this guide

• December, November and January normals (highs, lows, precipitation, rain days) · IPMA, climate normals 1991-2020, station 522 Funchal, altitude 58.0 m · checked Sep 9, 2026
• Scope warning: these normals describe the south coast at 58 m, not the mountains or the north · IPMA station metadata · checked Sep 9, 2026
• Sea surface 70.3°F (and 73.0°F / 68.6°F for the neighboring months), taken as the mean of daily maxima 2015-2024 · Open-Meteo Marine API · checked Sep 9, 2026
• Daylight 10h04, sunrise 08:01 and sunset 18:04 on December 15 · sunrise-sunset.org · checked Sep 9, 2026
• Trail access fee EUR 4.50 (EUR 3 with an IFCN-protocol company), mandatory SIMplifica booking, 30-minute slots from sunrise to sunset, open and restricted PR list · Visit Madeira, official regional tourist board, Hiking / Access Conditions · checked Sep 9, 2026
• Cable car EUR 22 return, EUR 16 one way, 08:45 to 17:45 daily except Christmas Day, e-ticket valid 60 days · Teleférico do Funchal (madeiracablecar.com) · checked Sep 9, 2026
• Wicker sledges EUR 30 / 40 / 60, Monday to Saturday 09:00 to 18:00, same-day tickets on site, no three-person ride in rain or on wet ground · Carreiros do Monte, official price page · checked Sep 9, 2026
• Monte Palace Tropical Garden EUR 18, 09:00 to 18:00 October to March, museum until 17:00, closed December 25, 70,000 m² · Monte Palace Tropical Garden official site (several aggregators still publish EUR 12.50, which the garden’s own page contradicts) · checked Sep 9, 2026
• Taxa Municipal Turística EUR 2 per person per night, capped at 7 consecutive nights, exemptions and restart rule · Câmara Municipal do Funchal, official FAQ · checked Sep 9, 2026
• Editorial admissions: our files carry no monthly occupancy or room-rate index for Madeira, no December wind or swell normal, no verified December event dates, and no ticket price or winter hours for the Botanical Garden · nothing has been estimated in their place