Mallorca in October

In an average October the daily high at Palma is 23.9 °C, it rains on 6.1 days, and you get 12h 04m of usable riding light a day. The day shortens by 1h 14m between the first of the month and the last.

Mean daily high

23.9 °C

Mean daily low

13.1 °C

Days of rain

6.1

Sunshine

203 h

Light window

12h 04m

Sunrise, mid-month

08:00

Sunset, mid-month

19:09

Verdict: is it a good month to ride?

A month with one thing to plan around.

It rains on 6.1 days of the month, so most weeks will have a wet day in them.

We rate it a quiet month for riding conditions. That is our judgement, not a measurement.

Daylight, sunrise and sunset

Three days of October, the first, the middle and the last, calculated for Mallorca. Civil dawn and civil dusk mark the window you can ride in without lights; sunrise and sunset are when the sun crosses a sea horizon.

Across the month the light window averages 12h 04m against 11h 10m of sun above the horizon, which gives you about 54m of twilight you can use.

The island is wide enough to matter a little: mid-month the sun sets at 19:07 out at Cap de Formentor and 19:11 at Sant Elm. The mountains matter far more. These are sea-horizon times, and a valley under the 1,400 m wall of the Serra loses the sun long before the island does.

The clocks go back on 31 October 2027. Sunset is 18:50 the evening before and 17:49 that evening. The sun is the same, but you lose an hour of usable evening overnight, so plan every ride after that around an earlier finish.

Source Directive 2000/84/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council, Art. 2 and 3 · checked 6 August 2026

Wind by time of day

Ask what the wind does in October and you are asking two questions at once. How much of it you ride in depends on the hour you set off, far more than on the month. Whether the month gives you days when the wind stops you riding is the other question, and that one does follow the season. It is the only part of the island’s wind that makes one month better than another.

At 07:00 the wind at Palma de Mallorca averages 1.8 m/s, 6 km/h, which is almost nothing. By 16:00 it averages 4.9 m/s, 18 km/h. That is 3.1 m/s between the two ends of one October day. The largest difference between any two months of the year, compared at the same hour, is 2.6 m/s. So in October, the hour you set off changes the wind 1.2 times as much as the month you booked.

The sea breeze arrives at 12:00. In every month of the year it arrives between 11:00 and 13:00, never earlier and never later, in fifty years of records. That is the most useful wind fact for planning a ride here: the wind follows the time of day more than the season, and the hour it starts barely moves from January to December.

In October the wind reverses during the day. Morning and afternoon winds blow from 170° apart at Palma de Mallorca, which is close to opposite. If you ride out into the wind, it will have swung round by the time you turn for home. The old advice to ride out into the wind and earn a tailwind home gives you a headwind both ways this month.

Then there are the hard days. Force 6 blows in 0.9% of October’s riding hours at Palma de Mallorca, seventh of the twelve. Across the year it runs from 0.2% in June to 2.2% in February: about one riding hour in 110 here, against one in 640 at the calm end of the year and one in 46 at the rough end. This part of the wind does follow the season, and no start time avoids it.

The clock here is the island’s and the compass is this station’s. A sea breeze blows onshore, so a wind rose measured on the bay of Palma is not the rose at Port de Pollença, and nothing on this page models a coast it has not measured.

Source NOAA NCEI — Integrated Surface Database, global hourly (NOAA Open Data Dissemination) · checked 16 August 2026A work of the United States Government: public domain, free to use, including commercially.

Fifty years of Mallorca wind, explained for cyclists →

Weather: temperature, rain and sunshine

An average October at Palma airport: 23.9 °C by day, 13.1 °C at the coldest part of the night, 62 mm of rain across 6.1 days and 203 hours of sunshine. These are thirty-year normals, so they say what the month usually does and nothing at all about the week you have booked.

AEMET measures all of that at the airport, five metres above the sea, and you will spend most of the day well above the plain. The highest road summit we cover, Puig Major, stands 868 m above the station, and no sea-level average describes it. A second thermometer, up in the Serra, gives a better idea: compared with the airport hour by hour, it puts the air at that summit at 15.4 °C around midday in October. For conditions in the mountains today rather than on average, AEMET publishes Escorca (Lluc), at 481 m, the one Tramuntana station with fresh readings every day.

Source Agencia Estatal de Meteorología (AEMET) · checked 6 August 2026Temperature, rainfall, rain days and sunshine hours are AEMET’s standard climate values for Palma de Mallorca Airport (station B278), reference period 1981–2010.

Riding after sunset: lights and single file

Two Spanish traffic rules are tied to sunset rather than to the clock, so when they apply changes with the month. Both have applied since 1 October 2026. In October, sunset is at 19:09 mid-month.

• Between sunset and sunrise lights are compulsory. The rule is tied directly to sunset rather than to the general lighting requirement, and a light counts in place of a reflective garment (Art. 118.2). In October that starts at 19:09 mid-month, on essentially every road you will ride here.

  “Los conductores de bicicletas que circulen entre el ocaso y la salida del sol, o en condiciones meteorológicas o ambientales que disminuyan sensiblemente la visibilidad, deberán hacer uso al menos de un elemento luminoso o reflectante … visible a una distancia mínima de 150 metros, si circulan en vía interurbana.”

  Until 1 October 2026 this sat in Art. 98.1 + 98.3 and was written around the lighting requirement: a reflective garment visible at 150 metres, with no way to satisfy it using a light.

• Two abreast is allowed, keeping as far right as the road permits, but a group riding two abreast goes single file between sunset and sunrise (Art. 36.2). In October that is anything still rolling after 19:09.

  “los conductores de bicicletas podrán circular en columna de a dos por el arcén. En el caso de que éste no exista o no fuera transitable y suficiente, podrán circular en columna de a dos por la parte imprescindible de la calzada, si bien deberán colocarse en hilera en los tramos sin visibilidad, cuando afecten a la fluidez de la circulación, o cuando circulen entre el ocaso y la salida del sol”

  Until 1 October 2026 the article said nothing about the sun at all, which is why a great deal of cycling advice about Spain still does not mention it.

Source Agencia Estatal Boletín Oficial del Estado · checked 30 September 2026Consolidated text, redaction published 5 June 2026. This is the wording that binds today. The BOE's URL without a date does not serve it.

Every rule that binds a cyclist here, and the six that changed

Road closures and events

The road out to the Cap de Formentor lighthouse is closed to cars for part of the year: 15 May to 18 October 2026, 10:00 to at most 22:00, on the Boletín Oficial del Estado (BOE-A-2026-1255)’s window. Bicycles are exempt, which turns the most photographed road on the island into a bike-only road for the months that would otherwise be worst for riding it. October falls inside that window.

How it compares with other months

The nearest month to it in the other half of the year is March: 17.5 °C against 23.9 °C, 12h 51m of light against 12h 04m, 4.5 rain days against 6.1. The day is the same length; what changes is the 6.4 °C between them.

Either side of it: September at 27.9 °C and November at 19.0 °C.

• ← September
• March
• November →

Booking your trip

Choose the month and the room together, because prices follow the calendar: the weeks we rate highest are the weeks the cycling hotels are full. Price October against the months either side before you confirm anything.

Search places to stay in Mallorca

Compare hire cars at Palma airport

All twelve months compared →

How to read the light figures: they are the island’s, not a road’s. Terrain is not modelled, so a valley under the Serra goes dark earlier than the table says and a summit stays light later.

Sources

Verified Every figure on this page was re-checked against its source on 6 August 2026. Next review due within 365 days.