What is Chefchaouen like in September?

September is one of my favourite months to send people to Chefchaouen, and it is genuinely underrated. Early in the month it still carries summer's warmth — comfortable days in the high 20s to low 30s°C, usually around 27 to 31 — but the fierce edge has gone, the evenings turn cool and pleasant in that lovely mountain way, and, critically, the peak-season crowds start to drain away as soon as the European school holidays end. The weather stays dry and reliable, so you get summer's ease without summer's crush, which is a wonderful combination.

What I love most about September is the light and the atmosphere. The harsh summer glare softens into a warm, low golden light that makes the blue walls and ochre rooftops glow, and the medina feels calmer and more lived-in once the day-tripper crush eases through the month. The hills are still dry and tawny from summer, but the olive harvest gets going across the Rif, so the terraces around town come alive with families gathering fruit — a genuinely local, seasonal rhythm you can watch from the trails above the medina. It feels like the town exhaling after the summer rush.

It is an excellent walking month, with warm, dry, stable conditions ideal for the Akchour waterfalls hike and the climb to the Spanish Mosque, and the slightly cooler air makes the steep medina lanes easier going than in August. The Akchour pools are still warm enough for a swim early in the month. For travellers who want to combine the blue city with real mountain walking in reliable weather and gentler crowds, September is hard to beat, and it slots beautifully into a wider northern or imperial-cities trip when the whole region is at its kindest.

My honest framing: September gives you most of summer's warmth and long days with steadily thinning crowds and that gorgeous golden light — especially from mid-month onward, midweek. The trade-off is that the hills are at their driest and dustiest before the autumn rains green them up again, and daylight is shortening. But for warm-but-comfortable weather, calm, and the blue city looking golden and lived-in, September is among the two or three months I most happily recommend for Chefchaouen.