Best Month to Visit the Taj Mahal: A Month-by-Month Breakdown

November through February has the most comfortable daytime temperatures (roughly 22–29°C highs), but also the worst air quality of the year, with morning fog common enough to sometimes delay sunrise visibility. October and March are a middle ground: warmer, but clearer. There’s a real trade-off here, not a single “best” answer. It depends whether you’re optimizing for comfort or for a clear view.

Month-by-month temperature

Averages below are 1991–2020 climate normals from the India Meteorological Department, via Wikipedia’s Climate of Agra data table.

Month	Avg. high	Avg. low
January	22.2°C	7.4°C
February	26.2°C	10.4°C
March	32.1°C	14.2°C
April	38.4°C	20.0°C
May	41.9°C	24.4°C
June	41.1°C	25.5°C
July	36.0°C	24.7°C
August	33.1°C	23.9°C
September	34.2°C	23.5°C
October	34.7°C	18.7°C
November	29.2°C	13.2°C
December	23.7°C	8.1°C

April through June regularly hits 40°C+ — outdoor walking on the marble platform in that heat is genuinely hard going, especially midday.

The air quality trade-off winter doesn’t advertise

This is the part most “best time to visit” pages skip. Agra’s air quality gets measurably worse starting around October and stays elevated through winter — the same months that are most comfortable temperature-wise. One dataset (IQAir, PM2.5, 2019) recorded January as the year’s worst month at 113.6 µg/m³, against an annual average of 57.2 µg/m³ — both in the “unhealthy” range by WHO standards. TODO(fasih): source a current-year (2026) monthly AQI dataset from CPCB's Agra station to replace this 2019 figure before this page is treated as current data — see cpcb.nic.in/agra-air-quality-data-2.

Morning fog is also concentrated November through January and can reduce visibility at sunrise specifically — the exact number of foggy mornings per month isn’t published anywhere we could verify. TODO(fasih): no quantified fog-day count found from IMD; if IWIS Global tracks this operationally from daily pickups, that's a better source than anything public.

Sunrise timing by season

Sunrise time matters directly for planning a sunrise tour’s pickup time. Two confirmed anchor points for 2026, from timeanddate.com:

Latest sunrise of the year: 7:10 AM, around 12 January 2026 (winter)
Earliest sunrise of the year: around the 21 June 2026 summer solstice (longest day, 13h 51m of daylight)

So a winter sunrise pickup needs to be scheduled noticeably later than a summer one. TODO(fasih): the exact sunrise time for each month wasn't retrievable from a scriptable source this session (timeanddate.com blocked automated fetches) — pull the specific month's time from that site directly when scheduling, rather than estimating.

So, when should you actually go?

Priority	Best window
Coolest temperatures	December–January
Clearer air, still mild	October, March
Avoiding both extremes	Late October–November, or February–early March
Willing to trade comfort for lower crowds	May–August (hot, humid, fewer tourists)

Last updated: 21 September 2026. Temperature data: IMD 1991–2020 normals via Wikipedia. Air quality: IQAir historical data (2019 — flagged above as needing a current-year replacement). Sunrise: timeanddate.com.