Is Seville too hot to visit in August? The question gets answered in round numbers that hide the only figure worth planning around. The mean daily maximum for July in Seville is 36.0°C, or 96.8°F, nearly eight degrees above the round-the-clock average for the same month.
Both figures are real and they describe different things. One of them is what a thermometer reads while a visitor is standing under it.
How hot is Seville in July and August?
The AEMET normal values for the Seville Aeropuerto station give July a mean temperature of 28.2°C and a mean daily maximum of 36.0°C, and August 27.9°C and 35.5°C. Mean minima are 20.3°C and 20.4°C, so nights stay warm. Rainfall is 2 mm in July and 5 mm in August.
August is workable, but not on a northern European schedule
August in Seville runs to a mean daily maximum of 35.5°C, which is 95.9°F, and a mean minimum of 20.4°C, or 68.7°F. That fifteen-degree spread is the answer to whether the month is viable: the same calendar day offers two genuinely different climates, and which one a visitor meets is decided by the hour rather than the date.
For context on how unusual that is, Seville clears a 35°C mean maximum in exactly two months of the twelve. May stops at 27.2°C and April at 23.4°C, so the jump into high summer happens across a few weeks rather than gradually. A traveller who has been to Andalusia in spring has not experienced the same city.
A schedule built on continuous daytime sightseeing collides with that curve and loses. A schedule that front-loads the morning, empties the middle of the day and returns after dark works with it. The trade is real rather than rhetorical, and it is the difference between August being difficult and August being impossible.
The two July numbers that get quoted as one
The climate normals that the AEMET records for the Sevilla Aeropuerto station give July a mean temperature of 28.2°C and a mean daily maximum of 36.0°C. The difference between those two figures is 7.8 degrees, and only one of them describes the afternoon.
A mean temperature averages all twenty-four hours, which is why 28.2°C sounds manageable and why it circulates so widely. August behaves almost identically, at 27.9°C mean against 35.5°C maximum. These are the only two months of the year in Seville whose mean maximum clears 35°C.
The nights do not cool down either
Seville records a mean minimum of 20.3°C in July and 20.4°C in August, or roughly 68.5°F. Those are the coolest points of an average summer day, reached around dawn, and they explain why an evening in the city stays comfortable long after dark rather than turning cold the way an inland summer often does.
The practical consequence runs both ways. Late dinners and night visits are genuinely pleasant, which is why so much of Seville’s summer programme sits after sunset. But a hotel room without working air conditioning does not recover overnight either, and that is a booking criterion rather than a detail.
Rain is not a variable worth planning around
July brings 2 mm of rain and August 5 mm according to AEMET, against an annual total of 539 mm. December alone accounts for 99 mm and November 91 mm. Across the whole of high summer the two months together contribute about one per cent of the year’s rainfall.
July is also the sunniest month on the record, with 354 hours against 328 in August and 154 in December, and it carries the lowest relative humidity of the twelve months at 44 per cent. Dry heat behaves differently from humid heat, and it means an outdoor plan in Seville never gets cancelled by weather. It only gets moved to a different hour.
June or September, and which one actually wins
September wins, narrowly. Its mean daily maximum of 31.7°C sits half a degree below June’s 32.2°C, and both run more than four degrees cooler than July. That four-degree margin is far larger than the idea of one long undifferentiated Andalusian summer suggests. Push one month further out in either direction and the drop steepens: May sits at 27.2°C and October at 26.0°C, nearly ten degrees below July.
In Fahrenheit the two land either side of a round number, with June at 90.0°F and September at 89.1°F, which is close enough that neither should be picked on temperature alone.
The counterargument is rainfall and it is worth stating. September brings 27 mm against June’s 10 mm, and its relative humidity climbs to 54 per cent from June’s 48 per cent. So the verdict splits by priority: September for the lower temperature, June for the near-guarantee of dry days. Neither is a milder version of July, and treating them as a softer edition of the same month is what produces a badly planned week.
The monuments already moved their hours
Seville Cathedral opens at 9.30am in July and August instead of 11am, and the full cathedral and Giralda timetable shows the closing hours holding steady while only the opening shifts. The Real Alcázar de Sevilla keeps a 9.30am opening all year and extends its closing to 7pm from April through September, as set out in the guide to Alcázar tickets and free entry.
Read alongside a mean minimum of 20.3°C and a mean maximum of 36.0°C, those timetables stop looking like administrative detail. Both institutions have pushed their capacity towards the two ends of the day, which is exactly where the temperature curve sits low. A visitor doing the same thing is not improvising: they are following the same reading of the same data.
One caveat belongs here. Giralda access stops at 5pm on every day except summer Sundays, when it holds until 6pm, so the cooler late slot is available for the cathedral floor but not for the tower climb. The Alcázar behaves the other way round, clearing its grounds 45 minutes after a 7pm close, which puts its last usable hour squarely in the part of the afternoon the temperature curve is still falling through.
An open archaeological site with no continuous shade is where these figures bite hardest. The guide to Itálica and its bus service works around a 3pm close that reads as a restriction in autumn and as protection in July.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure above is a climate normal from the AEMET weather station at Sevilla Aeropuerto, sitting at 34 metres of altitude, over the 1981 to 2010 reference period. Normals are thirty-year averages rather than forecasts, which is why they are stable enough to plan a trip against and useless for predicting a particular afternoon.
Two things follow. An individual summer day can and does run well above a 36.0°C mean maximum, so the normals describe the shape of the season rather than its ceiling. And because the station sits at the airport rather than in the old town, readings inside a dense stone city centre behave differently from open ground on the outskirts.
The same record puts the whole year in proportion. Seville averages 19.2°C across the twelve months, with an annual mean maximum of 25.4°C and 539 mm of rain, while January bottoms out at a 10.9°C mean and a 16.0°C maximum. The distance between the coldest and the hottest month, measured on mean maxima, is twenty degrees. Relative humidity moves across a similar span, from 44 per cent in July to 74 per cent in December, which is why a summer figure and a winter figure of the same temperature do not feel alike.
Frequently asked questions about Seville heat in July and August
How hot does Seville get in August?
AEMET puts the mean daily maximum for August in Seville at 35.5°C, which is 95.9°F, with a mean minimum of 20.4°C or 68.7°F. July runs half a degree hotter across the board, at 36.0°C and 20.3°C respectively.
Is August a bad time to visit Seville?
August works if the day is built around the temperature curve rather than against it. The gap between the mean minimum of 20.4°C and the mean maximum of 35.5°C is fifteen degrees, so the early hours are a different climate from the late afternoon.
Does it rain in Seville in summer?
Almost never. The climate normals record 2 mm of rain in July and 5 mm in August, against 99 mm in December. On an annual total of 539 mm, the two summer months together account for about one per cent.
Should I visit Seville in June or September instead?
September, narrowly. Its mean daily maximum of 31.7°C sits half a degree below June’s 32.2°C, though September brings 27 mm of rain against June’s 10 mm. Both months run more than four degrees cooler than July.
What time of day is coolest in Seville in summer?
The early morning. July has a mean minimum of 20.3°C and a mean maximum of 36.0°C, so the day travels almost sixteen degrees between its coolest point around dawn and its hottest in mid-afternoon.
Which is the hottest month in Seville?
July, on every measure in the record. It holds the highest mean temperature at 28.2°C, the highest mean daily maximum at 36.0°C and the most sunshine at 354 hours, alongside the lowest relative humidity of the year at 44 per cent.
Seville in August is not measured in degrees but in hours. The same 36.0°C fits inside a day that still works.