30/09/2026
🍂 October is not the end of rooftop season on this coast, and treating it as one is the most common mistake visitors make.
The terraces stay open. The heat settles into the low twenties, which is the temperature everybody claims they want in August and then somehow complains about in October. The light gets better rather than worse, because the sun sits low enough to come in sideways and catch the buildings instead of bleaching them.
What actually closes is the pools, and only some of them, and mostly not until the middle of the month.
I have sat outside on a terrace in Málaga in every month of the year, including January. There are perhaps three weeks of it that are genuinely unpleasant, and they are all between the middle of January and the start of February, and even then it is a jumper rather than a coat.
The thing nobody tells you is that the season here does not end. It changes shape. In August you are chasing shade and a breeze. By late October you are chasing the last hour of sun on a west-facing terrace, which is a different pleasure entirely and arguably the better one.
So if you are looking at flights now and quietly wondering whether you have missed it, you have not missed it.
The best six weeks of the year on a Costa del Sol rooftop start roughly this week and run to the middle of November.
Book the late flight.
Which month do you think is the real best one here?
