Tenerife in December: Weather by Area, Prices & What to Pack
Let’s be honest: looking up the “average” weather in Tenerife in December is a genuine waste of your time. The island runs two different climates at once, and treating it like one big sunny rock is exactly how people end up freezing in a hoodie halfway through a badly planned week.
I have been here twice, October and August, splitting both trips between La Laguna in the north and Costa Adeje in the south. That divide is the whole reason I can be useful about this month.
December is the trip I am booking right now, so every winter number below comes from AEMET and the official booking platforms rather than from memory.
Here is what the weather actually does by area, what the sea really feels like, when prices jump, and how to plan around a sunset that arrives far earlier than you expect.
Tenerife December weather, by area rather than by island
Before I get into it, the plain version. Tenerife in December runs 21 to 23°C in the south and 19 to 20°C in the north, with a sea at 21°C, around 6 hours of sunshine a day and roughly 10 hours of daylight. The south coast gets two or three wet days across the whole month. The north gets seven or eight. That one split is the entire story of this month.
Quick thing before the numbers. If you are still choosing between islands, I compared Lanzarote, Tenerife and Gran Canaria in December and the differences are smaller than most people expect.
Assuming you have landed on Tenerife, here is the part almost nobody spells out. The island wide average is useless to you.
What you need is the figure for the town you are actually sleeping in, because the island is nearly 4,000 metres tall at the middle. And the weather changes completely depending on which side of that mountain you are standing on.
| Area | Daytime high | Night low | Sea temp | Sunshine | Rain days |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Costa Adeje and the south west | 22 to 23°C | 17°C | 21°C | 6 to 7h | 2 to 3 |
| Los Cristianos | 22°C | 17°C | 21°C | 6 to 7h | 2 to 3 |
| Santa Cruz and the east coast | 21 to 22°C | 17°C | 21°C | 6h | 4 |
| Puerto de la Cruz and the north | 19 to 20°C | 15 to 16°C | 21°C | 5 to 6h | 7 to 8 |
| La Laguna (550m inland) | 16 to 17°C | 11°C | n/a | 5 to 6h | 9 |
| Teide cable car base (2,356m) | 2 to 6°C | Below freezing | n/a | Highest on the island | Snow possible |
Costa Adeje and the south west
Los Cristianos
Santa Cruz and the east coast
Puerto de la Cruz and the north
La Laguna (550m inland)
Teide cable car base (2,356m)
If you want it in millimetres: Costa Adeje gets about 25mm across December, Santa Cruz about 45mm, and Puerto de la Cruz about 70mm. Same island, nearly three times the rain.
Look at the La Laguna row, because that one catches people out. It is twenty minutes from the coast and five degrees colder, and I felt that gap in October every single evening.
Before you pack, check the forecast by municipality rather than by island on AEMET, the Spanish met office, because a grey morning in Puerto de la Cruz tells you genuinely nothing about what Costa Adeje is doing at that exact moment.
How hot is Tenerife in December?
About 22°C in the daytime in the south, and it is a real 22°C rather than a technical one, because the south west sits in the rain shadow and gets the sun to go with the number.
The bit the tables do not capture is the sea breeze. It runs through most of the morning on the south coast whatever month you are in, and it is the reason a 22°C day can still want a long sleeve at nine in the morning.
Tenerife temperature in December, early month versus late
The temperature barely moves across the month. You are looking at maybe one degree between 3 December and 30 December, which is not enough to base a decision on.
What changes dramatically is what you pay. The jump is not vaguely “Christmas”, it lands around the 18th to the 20th, and it is steep.
When I was pricing my own December week I ran the same apartment twice, once for the first week and once for the week of the 22nd, and it came back at close to double for the later dates.
So if your dates fall anywhere near Christmas, see what is still free for your dates and what it costs before you decide, and take a free cancellation rate while you are there. Free cancellation is not me hedging, it is what I actually do here.
On my October trip I had to move my Teide day at short notice because of a weather alert, and being able to shuffle plans without losing money is worth more on this island than on most.
And if your dates are locked to the expensive half of the month, the move is to change town rather than change dates.
Golf del Sur, Costa del Silencio, El Médano and the residential streets behind Los Cristianos all sit in the same sunshine as Costa Adeje for noticeably less. Because you are paying for the postcode rather than the weather. In the north, Los Realejos does the same job next to Puerto de la Cruz.
Which part of Tenerife is hottest in December?
The south west, and it is not close. Costa Adeje, Los Cristianos and Playa de las Américas sit in the lee of Teide, so the trade winds dump their cloud on the northern slopes and the south gets what is left over, which is sunshine.
Tenerife south weather in December is the reason every resort on the island is clustered down there, and it is worth being blunt about it. If December sun is the whole point of your trip, stay south. The weather in Costa Adeje in December is about as reliable as European winter sun gets.
The north is a different island. Puerto de la Cruz weather in December means cloud rolling in off the Atlantic and roughly three degrees off the southern figures, with two or three times as many rain days.
I am not saying that to put you off, because I chose the north as my main base on both trips and would do it again. Everything up there is green because of that cloud, the banana terraces, the laurel forest in Anaga, the gardens in Puerto de la Cruz.
In October I watched the fog come over the Anaga ridge at eleven in the morning and swallow the whole car park at Cruz del Carmen, and it was one of my favourite mornings on the island. It is just not a sunbathing base in winter, and pretending otherwise is how people end up disappointed.
So the weather makes the decision for you, and the only thing left is which southern town. Costa Adeje and Los Cristianos both work well in December for different reasons, and I have broken down where to stay in Tenerife in December before you commit to one.
The move that makes all of this work is having wheels. A car is what lets you drive out of the cloud in a single morning, which in December is the difference between a written off day and a good one.
In August I paid about €34 a day for a small automatic booked locally rather than at the airport desks, which came in cheaper than the international counters and let me filter for full insurance with no deposit. On the Anaga and Masca roads, that insurance is the one thing I would insist on.
Can you swim in Tenerife in December?
Yes, and people do it every day. The Tenerife water temperature in December sits at about 21°C, which is warm enough to swim properly and cold enough that you will count the minutes.
That puts it in a group of four. I ranked everywhere in Europe you can actually swim this month, and the Canaries take all four places.
Here is my honest calibration, since October is the closest I have been. The sea was around 23°C when I swam at Las Teresitas, and it was warmer than I expected.
At El Caletón in Garachico I stayed in for twenty minutes without complaining once, and that was also at about 23°C. Take two degrees off that and you have December. It will be fine after the first minute, you will not be floating around for an hour, and you will get out with cold hands.
The Tenerife sea temperature in December is also the same figure right around the island, which is the detail that trips people up.
And I mean the same to a ridiculous degree. Ten year averages put Costa Adeje at 21.3°C and Puerto de la Cruz at 21.1°C. Two tenths of one degree between the two ends of an island that cannot agree on anything else.
You will read that the sea is 19°C and that nobody swims. That is not what the data says, and it is worth knowing where it comes from: most locals stop swimming in November and think anyone in the water in December is a tourist. They are not wrong about who is in the water. They are wrong about the temperature.
What actually decides whether the swim is good is wind, not water, so I went through the most sheltered Tenerife beaches for exactly this reason. An open beach with the breeze running down it, and you are dry and cold four minutes after getting out.
The real December caution is not cold, it is swell. This is the month the Atlantic starts throwing weather at the island, the north coast in particular gets rough, and some stretches have currents that are genuinely dangerous rather than just uncomfortable. Swim from a beach with flags and a lifeguard, and if the flag is red it is red for a reason rather than for insurance purposes.
Is Tenerife busy in December?
For the first two and a half weeks, not particularly. Flights and apartments are at their cheapest of the winter, the promenades have space on them, and the island feels like it belongs to the people who live there.
Then it flips, hard, from that third week onward. It is not just the price jump, it is the density. Flights fill, the resorts run near capacity, and it stays that way through to early January.
Find a place to stay in Costa Adeje & Los Cristianos Compare hotels & apartments on one mapTwo dates catch people out badly. On Christmas Day, and again on 6 January for Reyes, which is the bigger gift giving day in Spain, most restaurants and supermarkets in the resort towns either close or open for a couple of hours and shut.
If you are self catering, shop the day before. That is not a Tenerife quirk, it is how Spain works, and it surprises British and northern European visitors every year.
The other thing to know is that the north keeps its own rhythm regardless. La Laguna on a Saturday morning is a local market town with a proper produce market on the plaza, and on my October trip a barraquito and a bocadillo came to under €5 at the bar on the corner. Nothing about the holiday season changes that.
Things to do in Tenerife in December
December is quietly the best month for Teide, and it is the one thing I would build the trip around.
The air is drier and clearer than in summer, the park sits above the cloud line so a grey coast often means blue sky up there, and the whole park is a Starlight Reserve.
The sky from the Parador car park at ten at night was the clearest I have seen anywhere in Europe, and that was in October with more moisture in the air than you get now.
The trade off is that it is a genuine winter mountain in December, not a viewpoint with a lift attached.
Teide in December, the bits that need sorting in advance:
- 🎟️ Cable car. About €40 for the return. Take the 09:00 slot, because the coach groups arrive around 11:00 and the queue for the way down triples. I booked mine two weeks out in August and it was already one of the last slots left, so for a clear December morning I would lock the time in weeks ahead rather than turn up hoping.
- 🥾 Summit permit. Separate booking, and no longer free. Since January 2026 non residents pay €15 for the Telesforo Bravo trail to the crater, and it is handled only through Tenerife ON. New dates open every Monday at 07:00 Canary time and they go within the day, so set a reminder.
- 🧥 Gear. A real winter jacket, closed shoes with grip, and gloves. Not a hoodie, not trainers, not the flip flops I watched somebody regret at the top station.
- ❄️ Closures. The TF21 and TF24 up to the crater can shut after snow, sometimes for a morning and sometimes for two days. Mine closed for a morning in October after a weather alert and I simply swapped my days around.
- 🥇 The free fallback. If the cable car is shut for wind, do not turn around and drive home. The Roques de García loop from the car park opposite the Parador is 3.5km, mostly flat, free, and the best hour you can spend in the park on foot.
One more honest note. December on Teide is a mountain trip in winter conditions, with ice on the upper paths and real altitude at 3,715 metres, so check that whatever cover you are carrying actually includes hiking at altitude.
Plenty of standard policies quietly stop at 2,000 metres, which is below the top of the cable car, and if yours does it is worth adding a short policy that covers altitude before you fly.
Beyond Teide: what else December is good for
The Geminids. The meteor shower peaks on 13 and 14 December, and Teide National Park is a Starlight Reserve sitting above the cloud with almost no light pollution under it. If your dates are anywhere near the middle of the month, that is the night to be up there.
Whale watching, and a correction. You will read that December is good because the whales are migrating. The pilot whales off the south west coast do not migrate, they live there all year. December is a good month because the water is calmer than it looks and the boats run less full. Around €35 to €45 for two hours out of Los Gigantes or Puerto Colón.
Surf. The same swell that makes December swimming patchy makes it the best surf of the year. If you have ever wanted a lesson, the south coast schools run all winter and the waves in December are the real thing rather than the summer version.
Down at sea level, the Christmas side of the island is concentrated inland rather than in the resorts, which is exactly why I am timing my own trip around it.
Here is where I have to correct something nearly every English article about this month says. Tenerife does not really do Christmas markets. There is a small craft stall market on Plaza del Adelantado in La Laguna and it is a nice hour, but if you are picturing Vienna or Cologne you will be done with it in ten minutes. The resident bloggers are right about this and the travel sites are overselling it.
What Tenerife does instead is lights, on a scale that is genuinely hard to picture until you are standing under them.
Santa Cruz switches on around 20 November, with more than 4.5 million LEDs across over 400 locations in the city.
La Laguna follows in the last week of November, with roughly 6 million lights and about 3,500 decorative pieces through a UNESCO listed old town that already looks good with nothing on it.
They stay up until Reyes. So whenever in December you come, the lights are on. This is the bit I had wrong in my head before I started planning.
The belenes. La Laguna runs a nativity route of 37 displays made by local artisans and parishes, scattered across the municipality. Go on a weekday evening.
The house. In Valle de Guerra, just outside La Laguna, one family has decorated their home every December since 1995 and it now pulls visitors from across the island. Free, completely over the top, and the thing I most want to see.
And then the part that actually matters, which almost nothing written in English leads with. The evening of 5 January is the Cabalgata de Reyes, the Three Kings parade, and in Spain that is the real event. It is a bigger night than Christmas Day. If your trip runs into January at all, keep that evening free.
Dates shift a little each year, so check the current programme on Turismo de Tenerife before you book flights around any of it.
Getting around, and what to wear
If you have read the weather section and decided to skip the car, fair enough. Plenty of people never leave the south west and have a brilliant week.
In that case, a prebooked transfer from Tenerife South is the one thing I would not leave until you land.
I pay for a fixed price pickup on arrival every time, because I would rather know the number in advance than work it out at eleven at night in a taxi rank queue. Mine to La Laguna ran about €75 for the hour, and Costa Adeje is a much shorter run, so a set price transfer sorted before you fly comes in well under that.
What to wear in Tenerife in December
Pack for time of day rather than for a single temperature.
The daytime south coast kit is exactly what you would expect, swimwear, shorts, sunglasses, and factor 30 minimum because the UV is higher than the mild air makes it feel.
Add one long sleeve for the breezy mornings and one proper layer for after sunset, when it drops to around 17°C.
Evenings are what people under pack for, because they spend all day judging the climate from a sun lounger. If you are going inland to La Laguna at all, that town sits at 550 metres and runs about five degrees colder than the coast after dark.
The mountain layers in the Teide list above are a separate thing entirely, and they are not optional.
What I
pack
What I pack for a week in Tenerife in December — sunny, windy & cold after dark.
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The thing nobody told me about December here
It goes dark at about ten past six, and nobody puts that on a weather page. It also does not get light until about ten to eight, which is the half of this that nobody warns you about at all.
You get 10 hours and 20 minutes of daylight in December, roughly four hours less than June, and both ends of it are gone. So the 7am mountain start you were planning is actually a 7am drive in the dark.
That sounds minor until you realise it removes the entire back half of every day. The mistake I made on my very first trip was booking one hotel in the south and driving two hours north three mornings in a row, and it cost me half the week even in daylight.
In December that same plan would be worse, because a two o’clock departure for Anaga or the north coast means coming back down mountain roads in the dark.
So for my December week I am doing what I should have done the first time. Two bases instead of one, everything mountain related starting before nine, and nothing ambitious planned after four in the afternoon. Beach and food in the late afternoon, driving in the morning, and no pretending otherwise.
That shift matters more than it sounds if you are here for a full week, so I would take my 7 day Tenerife route and simply start everything an hour earlier than it says.
Need help planning your trip?
If you are trying to piece together a December week here and the north and south split is making it complicated, I do personalised trip planning for Tenerife and the rest of the Canaries.
I build day by day plans around your dates, your pace and how much driving you actually want to do. You can have me build your December week around your dates rather than working it out from scratch.
Questions I get asked about Tenerife in December
Is there snow on Teide in December?
Sometimes, and it is worth being clear that it is not guaranteed. The first snow of the winter often falls in December and the summit sits above 3,700 metres, so it happens most years, but plenty of Decembers stay brown until January.
The first real snowfall usually lands somewhere between mid December and mid January, and at that altitude it can melt off within a few days. So if seeing it matters to you, watch the forecast in the week before you fly rather than booking on hope.
The upside is that you do not need to drive up to see it. On a clear morning you can look up from the beach in the south and there it is.
Are there Christmas markets in Tenerife?
Not in the way you are imagining. There is a small craft market on Plaza del Adelantado in La Laguna and a few pop ups elsewhere, but nothing on the scale of a mainland European Christmas market.
What Tenerife does properly is lights and nativity scenes, and La Laguna’s 37 belen route is the thing I would actually plan an evening around.
If you are coming specifically for Christmas atmosphere, adjust your expectations toward quiet, family and beautiful rather than mulled wine and crowds.
When should I book a December trip to Tenerife?
Accommodation by the end of September for dates after the 18th, and the car before October, which is the one nobody says. Car rental rates for December climb hard from the autumn onward and I have seen quotes come in above the flight price.
The cable car wants two to three weeks, the Teide summit permit releases on Mondays at 07:00 Canary time and goes the same day, and flights are the one thing you can leave a bit later.
What is there to do in Tenerife in December besides the beach?
Quite a lot, and December is better for some of it than summer is. The air is clearer for Teide and the Geminid meteor shower peaks on the 13th and 14th. Whale watching runs all winter because the pilot whales are resident rather than migratory.
The surf is at its best. And the north does a proper wine region that almost nobody staying in the south ever sees. If you are travelling in the second half of the month, the lights in La Laguna and Santa Cruz are an evening out in their own right.
Can you sunbathe in Tenerife in December?
Yes, on the south coast, roughly between eleven and four. Outside that window the sun sits low enough that it stops feeling warm on your skin fairly quickly.
The catch is wind rather than temperature, so a spot with something solid behind you makes more difference than anything else, and I would take a second row lounger by a wall over a front row spot in the open.
Do not let the mild air talk you out of sun cream either, because the UV index still runs around 5 at midday here in winter.
Is it worth going to Tenerife in December?
Yes, and more so than January or February, which are both cooler and wetter across the Canaries. Go in the first two and a half weeks, stay south, and it is about the best value anywhere in Europe manages in December.
It is worth less if the picture in your head is long lazy beach days, because the short afternoon takes a real bite out of those. What December gives you instead is the mountain at its clearest and the resorts at their calmest.
I would not come for the north coast in December at all, beyond a couple of nights for the towns themselves.
Which Canary Island is warmest in December?
Fuerteventura and Lanzarote edge Tenerife by about a degree on paper, but the gap is smaller than the difference between two towns on Tenerife itself, which is the part that actually matters.
Gran Canaria’s south is the closest match to Costa Adeje. If your whole decision is heat, I ranked the warmest Canary Island in December rather than repeating the numbers here. What tipped it for me was that Tenerife is the only one where you can be swimming at ten and standing in near freezing wind on a volcano by one.
Is early December or the week of Christmas better?
Early December, for value, and it is not a close call. You get effectively the same weather for a fraction of the price and the island feels calm rather than packed.
The honest counterargument is atmosphere, because the lights, the nativity displays and the Nochevieja celebrations on New Year’s Eve genuinely are lovely.
If you are travelling to feel festive rather than to feel warm, late December wins. I have gone early with my own booking, because I am there for the sun and the mountain.
How hot is Tenerife on Christmas Day?
Around 21 to 22°C in the south, which is the same as every other day that month; the date changes the crowds, not the temperature. What does change is what is open.
Hotel restaurants are the exception to the closures, and they run as normal with a set Christmas menu that books out weeks ahead. So if you want to eat out on the 25th and you are not staying somewhere with its own dining room, reserve before you fly rather than after you land.
Is the north worth staying in during December, or should I just stay south?
This is the one I have actually lived, since La Laguna was my base for four nights on both trips. In December I would still give the north two or three nights rather than a week.
Puerto de la Cruz and La Laguna are far more interesting than any southern resort, with proper old towns and much better food for the money. But you will lose mornings to cloud, and in a short winter week that hurts. Do it as a split stay, south first so you bank your beach days, then north.
Are hotel pools heated in December?
Some are, plenty are not, and the listing often does not say. An unheated pool in December sits a couple of degrees below the sea, so around 19C, which is a noticeably colder entry than the Atlantic.
If pool time is a real part of your trip, email the property and ask outright rather than assuming. It is the single most common complaint I see from people who booked a December stay on price alone.
Do I need a car for the whole trip?
Not necessarily, and the answer depends entirely on where you sleep. If you are staying south, three or four days covering a Teide day, a north day and one coastal drive is usually enough, and the resort areas are walkable otherwise.
Two numbers worth knowing before you decide. Winter daily rates are low enough that keeping the car all week often costs less than a couple of long taxi runs, but hotel garages in the south charged me €12 a day on top, which nobody mentions. In the north, a car is not really optional, because Anaga by bus is a half day of connections.
Should I fly into Tenerife North or Tenerife South in December?
For a December sun trip, south. It is the airport that serves the sunny half of the island, it is around 20 minutes from Costa Adeje, and it takes most of the European low cost flights.
I do recommend Tenerife North for the two base week I have written elsewhere, because it puts you ten minutes from La Laguna, but that is a different kind of trip. If your December is built around beach days, do not add an hour of driving at both ends to save €20 on a fare.
One last thing before you book
Tenerife in December works if you plan for the split instead of the average. Stay south, go in the first half of the month, take a car for a few days so you can drive out of the cloud, and start everything before nine because the light disappears at ten past six.
I have seen this island in October and in August, and December is the one I kept meaning to do and finally booked. The sea will be brisk, the top of Teide will be near freezing, and the south will be about 22°C and sunny while the north sits under cloud. Bring the jacket for the mountain. Seriously, everyone forgets the jacket.
More island and coast reading
If you are still working out where a December week fits into a bigger trip, these are the posts I would read next.
- Spain in winter: mainland vs the Canaries
- All my Spanish coast posts, in one place
- Island hopping in Europe, routes I have done
Before You Book: The Tools I Actually Use
I only link to tools and platforms I’ve personally used and would use again. If you book through my links I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you — which helps me keep writing these guides.
Sort by guest rating above 8.5 and check the map view before confirming.
Book as soon as you confirm flights. Summer prices in the islands rise fast.
Routes sell out in July and August. Book early for Balearic islands.
Boat tours, kayaking, guided hikes. Morning slots go first.
I never travel without it — covers illness, cancellations, and lost luggage.
The easiest way to move between coastal towns without a car. Prices rise closer to departure.
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