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Where is the country of Albania located? Albania is an unknown country in the Balkans for many Dutch people. While popular countries such as Greece, Bulgaria and Croatia can count on many tourists from the Benelux, Albania has been lagging behind in terms of tourism for years. It will not be directly related to the climate, because Albania has the same Mediterranean climate with warm summers and mild winters especially along the coast. In the interior, the winters can be a lot more severe, especially in the higher areas such as the Albanian Alps in the north of the country. According to the official Köppen-Geiger climate classification, Albania has a warm Mediterranean climate under the designations Csa (along the coast) and Csb (inland).

Code yellow for Albania

Good news! From Thursday 24 June 2021, ‘code yellow’ will apply to Albania. This means that you can travel to Albania for a holiday. There is no negative travel advice for Albania. There is no mandatory PCR test or vaccination to re-enter the Netherlands for the return journey. You do not have to quarantine when you return home, unless you have corona-related complaints. Then the normal rules apply: stay home and get tested. For the trip to Albania, the rules of the country of arrival apply. They can vary and change.

Travel advice can be adjusted quickly due to changing circumstances. We are primarily a weather and climate site. To be sure, always check the government site Wijsopreis.nl for the current travel advice for Albania.

Warm summers

The summer months in Albania are warm to sometimes hot. On average, the maximum temperature in July and August is around thirty degrees. However, this is an average: outliers upwards are very possible. If all elements cooperate, temperatures can rise to around forty degrees. Just as quickly as a heat wave happens, the weather in Albania can change just as quickly. Due to the structure of the country and its location on the Adriatic Sea, heat is regularly displaced by sometimes very heavy rain and thunderstorms, whereby the daytime temperature can drop by more than ten degrees within 24 hours. In July and August this is not too bad, but certainly at the end of the summer the risk of severe depression increases rapidly. The best months (June, July and August) are sun-filled and the average amounts of rain are not high in those months. From October, the summer turns into the autumn season, in which the amount of sunshine decreases considerably and the intensity of rainfall increases.

Mild winters

The Albanian winters are generally mild, especially if you are talking about the lower coastal areas. On average it is not cold there in winter. Daytime temperatures around or even above ten degrees are no more than normal and at night the mercury remains above freezing for most of the days. Colder is possible and almost every winter the coastal areas of Albania also have a period with light to moderate frost during the day and sometimes some snow. In the mountains it gets a lot cooler and snow, ice and frost are very common during the winter period, which runs from late November to early March in Albania. Large amounts of snow can fall on the windward side of the mountains and cities such as Tirana also sometimes have to deal with a white snow cover in winter. In the mountains, snow is very normal in winter and especially above 1000-1500 meters you can usually do excellent winter sports. Anyone looking for ski resorts in Albania will come to the conclusion that it is much less organized here than what you are used to in many other countries. Ski resorts, ski lifts, après ski? You will not be confronted with it very much in Albania.

Precipitation

For the whole of Albania, the winters generally register more precipitation than the drier summers. The size of the differences is mainly determined by the location and can also vary greatly from year to year. Due to the many mountains, the weather is very erratic, so that one place can measure rain for days while it is bone dry ten kilometers away. As a rule, the north and the mountains in the southwest register more precipitation on an annual basis than the rest of the country. The average amount of precipitation per year is between seven hundred and twelve hundred millimeters. In some years, precipitation amounts for a particular region can reach almost fifteen hundred millimeters. That is really a local phenomenon: in the same place it can be half drier a year later.

Sun

The number of hours of sunshine varies from about two thousand per year in the least sunny areas inland to almost three thousand hours of sunshine in Saranda Sarandë, which is located in the southwest on the coast of the Greek island of Corfu. The average for Albania is between 2400 and 2500 hours, of which the months of July and August are by far the sunniest with over 300 hours of sunshine per month.

Climate figures

The figures below are based on long-term average climate statistics. The temperatures are displayed in degrees Celsius (°C).

Best time to visit Albania

Do you want to know when is the best time to travel to Albania? You can determine the best time to travel to a destination based on the weather and climate. In addition, there are other factors that are not directly related to the weather and that can influence the best travel periods for a travel destination. Think, for example, of holidays or festive periods, which makes traveling more interesting or not, because daily life comes to a standstill as a result.

Best months for Albania

Albania, located on the Balkans, is located by the sea, but has a climate that sometimes resembles a continental climate more than a maritime climate due to its capriciousness. Officially, Albania has a warm Mediterranean climate in the coastal areas and a moderate Mediterranean climate inland. On the mountain tops there is a continental climate with a subarctic climate on the highest peaks, which is quite exceptional for this latitude. The best time to travel to Albania is from May to September. This is the period when it is not too cold and mainly good weather can be expected.

What is your travel purpose?

It depends a bit on what your destination is. For a holiday in the sun, it is best to travel to Albania in July or August. In seaside resorts such as Durrës it is often pleasantly warm with temperatures around 27 to 30 degrees. Sometimes it gets a little hotter; rarely does it get much cooler in summer. There is always a chance of a rain or thunderstorm. In July and August the sea water has a pleasant temperature of about 24 to 26 degrees Celsius.

If you are going for a city trip to Albania, for example to visit the capital Tirana, it might be better to skip the hottest months. As soon as you go a bit inland, which is the case with Tirana, it can be a few degrees warmer than directly on the coast. To spend a whole day in a city it can be a bit on the hot side. We therefore consider the months of May, June and September the most suitable for a city trip within Albania.

Ski holiday

In winter it is cold enough to enjoy winter sports in Albania. Unfortunately, the number of ski areas is limited, as is the number of kilometers of slopes. Albania is therefore especially suitable for adventurous winter sports enthusiasts who are not dependent on ski lifts, but who go up under their own power and then be able to descend in complete freedom. Winter sports in Albania are usually possible from December to sometime in March.