A Weather Check for the Autumn Holidays: These holiday hotspots can tempt you with the most hours of sunshine in October

The vast majority of our autumn holidays will fall in October this time around. We rejoice over every hour of sunshine, especially when we’re on holiday, and particularly during the cooler times of the year when the nights are drawing in. Here at Traum-Ferienwohnungen, we’ve researched the amount of October sunshine you can expect from the vacation destinations in the 11 most popular holiday regions in each German state* so you don’t have to leave your autumn sunbathing fix up to chance. To do this, we looked at the long-term mean values given by the German Meteorological Service for each October from 1991-2020 and matched them up with the most popular German holiday destinations in the various Federal states.

Anyone looking for guaranteed sunshine is well advised to head to southern Germany: Eight of the ten sunniest vacation spots can be found in Bavaria (six) and Baden-Württemberg (two). If you widen your search to look at the top 30, however, Brandenburg sits in first place with seven destinations. Bavaria comes next with six destinations in the top 30, followed by Saxony, which claims third place with five locations to its name. Rhineland-Palatinate and the State of Hessen are at the other end of the scale: Of the 30 locations with the least amount of sunshine, ten can be found in the State of Hessen and eight are in Rhineland-Palatinate.

Garmisch-Patenkirchen is the sunniest holiday resort in October with 135 hours of sunshine during the month. Titisee-Neustadt in the southern Black Forest comes second with a good 124 hours of sun, followed by Görlitz with just under 123 hours. Potsdam sits in fourth place with just less than 122 hours. This puts it well ahead of Berlin, the nearby capital, which only manages 25th place with a little over 115 hours. The average value for all the holiday locations we examined is 108 hours of sunshine in October.

For all you holidaymakers who are more excited by mild temperatures or low levels of rain, we also matched up the holiday destinations in the following table with the long-term averages you'll be interested in. Although it's already getting pretty cold in Carlsfeld in the Ore Mountains with an average temperature of 5.9°C in October, you can look forward to milder-than-average temperatures if you head to Cologne (11.5°C) or the East Frisian islands of Norderney and Borkum (11.2°C). Looking at all three factors, it turns that that Quedlinburg in the northern Harz (114 hours of sunshine / 10.0°C / 38mm of rain), Lübben in the Spree Forest (118 hours / 9.6°C / 39mm) and Fehmarn (114 hours / 10.6°C / 49mm) are the most promising destinations for a getaway this autumn.

*(except city states and Saarland)