THE ALGARVE · NOVEMBER · 37.0° N
The Algarve spends five months of the year proving it can hold a summer crowd. November is the month after the machinery shuts down. The official normal high at Faro is 67.3°F, the normal low 53.4°F, and the region’s longest lifeguarded beach season, Albufeira’s, closed on October 15. What remains is roughly 93 miles of coast with its cliff paths intact, its light low all afternoon, and about seven days in thirty that will put rain on the windshield.
The trade is stated in three numbers. Daylight on November 15 runs 10 hours 14 minutes, from a 7:09 a.m. sunrise to a 5:23 p.m. sunset. The sea averages 65.3°F. And nobody is watching the water: lifeguard cover here is fixed beach by beach in the official gazette, and every council’s 2026 season has ended by the time November opens. The cliffs, the caves, the fortress and the towns keep working. Swimming is the part the month takes away.
THE MONTH AT A GLANCE · THE ALGARVE · NOVEMBER
November gives you the whole Algarve at a 67.3°F walking temperature with the summer crowd gone, and takes away the swimming: 65.3°F water and no lifeguards anywhere on the coast.
HIGH 67.3°F · LOW 53.4°F · 6.6 RAIN DAYS · SEA 65.3°F · BATHING SEASON CLOSED
Go for: cliff walking at shirtsleeve temperature, empty beaches, the Sagres promontory on a ticket that also covers the fortress, and a guided paddle into the Benagil arches without the July queue.
Think twice before: building the trip around the water. The sea reads 65.3°F, 2.7 days of the month deliver 0.39 inch of rain or more, and every beach in the region is unsupervised.
Normals: IPMA station 554, Faro, 1991–2020 · Sea: Open-Meteo Marine, 2015–2024 · full sources at the end
On this page
- Algarve weather in NovemberHighs, lows and 6.6 rain days
- Swimming in NovemberSea at 65.3°F, and no lifeguards
- Crowds and prices in NovemberWhere the month sits in the year
- Things to do in NovemberBenagil rules, Sagres hours
- A two-day plan around 10 hours of lightTwo days, hour by hour
- October or December insteadThree months, side by side
- Is November a good time to visit the Algarve?Who should book it and who should shift
The Algarve’s official November figures come from a single thermometer, and it stands at the eastern end of the coast. IPMA station 554 sits at Faro, 5 meters above sea level, and its readings do not describe all 93 miles. The high ground behind the coast is colder and far wetter, and the western end near Sagres keeps its own weather. Pack for the stretch you are actually sleeping on.
Algarve weather in November: average highs, lows and rain days
| Measure | November value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Average high | 67.3°F (19.6°C) | IPMA, station 554 Faro, 1991–2020 |
| Average low | 53.4°F (11.9°C) | IPMA, station 554 Faro, 1991–2020 |
| Precipitation | 2.97 in (75 mm) | IPMA, station 554 Faro, 1991–2020 |
| Days with 0.04 in or more | 6.6 | IPMA, station 554 Faro, 1991–2020 |
| Days with 0.39 in or more | 2.7 | IPMA, station 554 Faro, 1991–2020 |
| Sea surface, mean of daily maxima | 65.3°F (18.5°C) | Open-Meteo Marine, 2015–2024 |
| Daylight on November 15 | 10h 14m · 07:09 to 17:23 | sunrise-sunset.org |
These are 1991–2020 climate normals published by IPMA, Portugal’s national weather service, recorded at station 554 in Faro by an instrument 5 meters above the sea. The distinction is worth carrying around. IPMA measures with a thermometer. Reanalysis products estimate from a model grid cell, and the two rarely land on the same decimal. A November high of 67.3°F here is an average of measured afternoons, and 53.4°F is what the same instrument recorded before dawn.
Rain reaches the gauge on 6.6 days in an average November, counting any day with at least 0.04 inch. Only 2.7 days deliver 0.39 inch or more. Those thresholds belong to IPMA and do not convert to the 0.10-inch counts used in American tables, so a US chart showing five wet days is measuring a different thing. The month’s 2.97 inches tends to arrive in a couple of hard sessions rather than as a permanent gray drizzle.
Between the 67.3°F afternoon and the 53.4°F small hours sit almost 14 degrees, and the gap does its damage at dinner, when a terrace that was pleasant at four becomes a reason to eat indoors. A fleece, a waterproof shell and one pair of shoes you are willing to walk wet limestone in will cover the whole month. Our Portugal packing list handles the rest of the suitcase.
On November 15 the sun clears the horizon at 7:09 a.m. and drops at 5:23 p.m., Portuguese winter time being UTC. That is 10 hours 14 minutes, and it changes how a day is built: an afternoon cliff walk needs to start by three, and any drive with a view in it belongs before four. Restaurants that open at seven are serving in full darkness.
Can you swim in the Algarve in November? Sea temperature and what it feels like
Sea surface off the Algarve averages 65.3°F in November across the 2015–2024 record from Open-Meteo’s marine data. Read the number for what it is: an average of daily maxima, meaning the warmest reading of each day, which runs a shade above a true 24-hour mean. The water you walk into at nine in the morning sits under that figure, not on it.
At 65°F a swim is brisk for four minutes and punishing for thirty. Bring a shortie wetsuit and the sea becomes an activity again. Then add the legal layer: the 2026 gazette order fixes lifeguard cover beach by beach, and the coast’s longest season, Albufeira’s 25 listed beaches, ended on October 15. Lagos, Lagoa, Loulé, Faro, Olhão, Tavira, Silves, Aljezur and Vila do Bispo closed on September 30. Every November swim on this coast is an unsupervised swim.
We carry no verified November normal for wind or swell here, and would rather say so than round one up. The sources trusted above for air and water do not publish a station-level figure we could read. Treat the daily forecast as the operative document, especially west of Lagos where the coast turns to face the open Atlantic, and remember that a guided paddle at Benagil assumes a workable sea in the first place.
How busy is the Algarve in November? Crowds, prices and the closed bathing season
November sits at the floor of the Algarve’s year, and the calendar that proves it is legal rather than commercial. The gazette order setting lifeguard cover for 2026 closes the bathing season on September 30 in nine councils and on October 15 in Albufeira. Hotels, boat operators and kitchens run on the same clock. By November the towns built hardest for July are the ones that feel emptiest, and staffing is at winter level along the whole coast.
On booking lead times we have no verified figure for Algarve hotels in November, and no interest in inventing one. The single November reservation constrained by regulation is the guided cave trip: the maritime authority caps how many craft sit inside Benagil at once and how long each group stays, so those slots stay finite in any season. Cars are the other early call, and our rental guide explains why.
Cards on the table about the municipal tourist tax: we could not verify a current per-night amount for the Algarve councils at an official source, so no figure appears here. Ask at check-in and read the folio at checkout rather than assuming the room rate covers it. For what a Portuguese week costs in total, the cost guide does that arithmetic.
One upgrade genuinely changes the month, and it is the guided cave trip. Renting a kayak and paddling into Benagil alone stopped being an option in July 2025, so the licensed guide is now the only lawful way through the arches, at a price a summer rental never charged. A close second is a room with heated water indoors, given that the sea reads 65.3°F and no lifeguard is on the sand to watch you test it.
Things to do in the Algarve in November: Benagil cave rules and Sagres opening hours
November hands the cliffs back. Walking the headlands above Lagos out to Ponta da Piedade at a 67.3°F afternoon high is a wholly different exercise from doing it in high summer, and the same applies to the drive west toward the Sagres promontory. The month removes the swim and leaves nearly everything you would do with shoes on, including the eastern towns around Tavira.
The Fortaleza de Sagres opens 09:30 to 17:30, with last entry half an hour before closing, and the ticket covers both the fortress and the promontory behind it. Sundays and public holidays are free until 14:00, but only for people resident in Portugal, so an American visitor pays on every day of the week. We could not read the full adult price at source: the monument’s page serves its price table in JavaScript and the regional ticket shop was unreachable. Ask at the gate.
Free in November: the beaches themselves, the clifftop viewpoint above the Benagil cave, and every mile of coastal path. What is not free, and not negotiable, is the way inside the cave. Edital 019/2024, in force since August 13, 2024 and amended in 2025, bans swimming in and bans landing on the beach inside, from the shore or from a boat. Guided kayak and paddleboard groups are capped in number and timed at up to eight minutes. Motorized boats hold 15 meters off the arches, enter by the western one, and get two.
The Algarve in November: two-day itinerary and daylight hours
Day one runs west. Coffee at eight, on the Ponta da Piedade path by 9:30 while the light is still low across the water, lunch in Lagos around one. Drive out to Sagres after lunch and be through the fortress gate before 17:00, the last entry, with the promontory circuit included in the same ticket. Sunset lands at 5:23 p.m. on November 15, so plan on driving back east in the dark and eating late.
Day two goes to the water. Book the guided paddle at Benagil for mid-morning, when operators have read the day’s sea, and accept that your group’s stay under the arches is capped at eight minutes. If swell cancels it, move inland and indoors: the walled lanes and market at Tavira, or the old town at Faro, both at the eastern end where the rain gauge and the thermometer actually live.
The Algarve in November vs October and December: temperature, rain and sea
| Measure | October | November | December |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average high | 73.9°F | 67.3°F | 62.8°F |
| Average low | 60.4°F | 53.4°F | 49.5°F |
| Precipitation | 2.20 in | 2.97 in | 3.54 in |
| Days with 0.04 in or more | 6.0 | 6.6 | 7.0 |
| Sea, mean daily max | 67.3°F | 65.3°F | 63.4°F |
| Lifeguards | Albufeira only, to Oct 15 | None | None |
October runs 6.6 degrees warmer by day and a full 7 degrees warmer at night. December runs 4.5 degrees cooler by day than November and 3.9 cooler by night. Rainfall climbs in a straight line, 2.20 inches to 2.97 to 3.54, across 6.0, 6.6 and 7.0 days at the 0.04-inch threshold. The sea slides in similar steps, 67.3°F to 65.3°F to 63.4°F. All four columns come from the same IPMA station and the same marine record.
Moving four weeks earlier buys two degrees of sea, three quarters of an inch less rain and the only supervised beaches left on the coast, Albufeira’s, through October 15. It costs the quiet. Moving four weeks later costs another half inch of rain and two more degrees of water, and buys afternoons topping out at 62.8°F. Both months have their own accounting: October and December.
Is November a good time to visit the Algarve?
Yes, if the trip walks, drives and eats. Cliff paths, the fortress at Sagres, the eastern towns and the roads between them all work better at 67.3°F than in summer heat, and 6.6 rain days out of thirty leaves a generous supply of dry ones. No, if the trip is built on the sea. Water at 65.3°F, not one lifeguard between Aljezur and Castro Marim, and 10 hours 14 minutes of light make for a beach holiday that exists on paper.
When the answer is no, October is the month to take, and specifically October in Albufeira, the one council whose lifeguard season runs to the 15th: sea at 67.3°F, highs at 73.9°F, 2.20 inches of rain. Waiting instead until December adds half an inch of rain, drops the water to 63.4°F, and brings no lifeguards back. Our month-by-month verdict for Portugal sets the same choice against the north.
What November alone offers is the entire coast at walking temperature, cliff to cave to fortress, with the bathing season legally shut and the guided groups inside Benagil counted on one hand at a time.
The last word
Settle the swimming question first and the rest of November arranges itself around it. The gazette that governs this coast is fussier than one date: a single beach in Castro Marim gets lifeguards only from July 1 to August 31, the shortest run in the region, which tells you how narrowly supervision is rationed even in high summer. Book the guided paddle at Benagil, pack the shell for the 2.7 heavy days, and treat the 5:23 p.m. sunset as your dinner bell.
Sources & data for this guide
- November normals, rain days and thresholds · IPMA, climate normals 1991–2020, station 554 Faro, altitude 5.0 m · checked Sep 13, 2026
- Coverage caveat: the Faro station sits at the eastern end of the coast and does not describe the high ground · IPMA station metadata · checked Sep 13, 2026
- Sea surface 65.3°F, mean of daily maxima 2015–2024 · Open-Meteo Marine API · checked Sep 13, 2026
- Daylight 10h 14m, sunrise 07:09 and sunset 17:23 on November 15 (UTC, which is Portuguese winter time) · sunrise-sunset.org · checked Sep 13, 2026
- October and December figures, same station and same period · IPMA 1991–2020 · checked Sep 13, 2026
- Lifeguarded season by council, Albufeira to Oct 15, nine councils to Sep 30, one Castro Marim beach Jul 1 to Aug 31 · Diário da República, Portaria n.º 204-A/2026/1 of April 30, 2026, annex I · checked Sep 13, 2026
- Benagil access, swimming and landing ban, guides required for non-motorised craft, timed stays of 2 and 8 minutes, end of solo rentals in July 2025 · Autoridade Marítima Nacional, Edital 019/2024 amended by Edital 009/2025, relayed by regional operators and the Capitania do Porto de Portimão · the edital text itself was not read at source · checked Sep 13, 2026
- Fortaleza de Sagres hours 09:30–17:30, last entry 30 minutes before closing, Sunday and holiday free entry for Portuguese residents only · Monumentos do Algarve / DRC Algarve · the full adult price loads in JavaScript and could not be read · checked Sep 13, 2026
- A22 (Via do Infante) reported toll-free since January 1, 2025 · unconfirmed: operator and government pages serve their content in JavaScript · verification attempted Sep 9, 2026
- Crowd and price commentary is editorial; no per-night tourist tax figure could be verified for Algarve councils · check with your property when you book.