When is Norway quietest? Tourist nights by month

Norway, month by month

When is Norway busiest, and when is it quietest?

July was the busiest month in 2025, with 18.2% of the year's tourist nights. January was the quietest, with 4.9%. That makes July 3.7 times as busy as January.¹

Eight months each carried less than an average month's share of 8.3%: January, February, March, April, May, October, November and December.

Who stays in Norway: residents or guests from abroad?

In 2025, guests living abroad spent 34.9% of Norway's tourist nights. Residents of Norway spent the rest.¹

The share from abroad was highest in August, at 44.7% of that month's nights, and lowest in November, at 22.4%.¹

Residents of Norway spent more than half of the nights in every month of the year.

Eurostat counts guests by the country they live in, not by nationality.²

How seasonal is Norway compared with the rest of Europe?

July and August together carried 31.8% of Norway's nights. Ranked by that share, Norway is the 13th most seasonal of the 35 European countries we measured, where 1 is the country most concentrated into its two busiest months.¹

For comparison, the most seasonal country on this measure was Croatia at 54.5%, and the least seasonal was Malta at 21.8%. See all 35 countries ranked.

Which regions of Norway are least seasonal?

Across 7 regions, the share of 2025 tourist nights falling in each region's two busiest months ran from 22.7% in Svalbard og Jan Mayen to 46.3% in Agder og Sør-Østlandet.³

In every region the busiest month was July, the same as for Norway as a whole.³

Regional figures come from Eurostat's regional dataset, last updated on 2 July 2026, and can differ slightly from the national monthly figures above, which Eurostat updated in September. For Norway they match those figures. See all 123 regions ranked.

How full are Norway's hotels each month?

Hotel rooms were fullest in August, when 70.0% were in use, and emptiest in December, at 42.0%.⁴

This is Eurostat's net occupancy rate of bedrooms: bedrooms in use divided by bedrooms available. It covers hotels and similar places only, not campsites or holiday lets, so it can peak in a different month from the nights figures above.²

Where do Norway's visitors from abroad come from?

Among guests living abroad, the largest group came from Germany, with 18.1% of their 2025 nights, followed by the United States (11.5%) and Sweden (9.2%).⁵

Guests are counted by the country they live in. Eurostat publishes only some countries separately and groups the rest into regions, so smaller countries cannot appear in this list. Switzerland and Liechtenstein are published as one.

How long do guests stay in Norway?

Guests stayed an average of 1.9 nights each time they checked in at tourist accommodation in Norway in 2025: 40,590,017 nights across 21,422,152 arrivals.⁶ Across the 33 countries on this site with complete figures, the average ran from 1.5 nights in Iceland to 4.7 in Cyprus.⁶

This is our division of Eurostat's two counts. Eurostat counts an arrival each time a guest checks in at a place to stay, so a traveller who moves between places is counted more than once, and a whole trip is longer than the figure suggests.²

Did accommodation in Norway get more expensive in 2025?

On Eurostat's harmonised index of consumer prices, prices of accommodation services in Norway were 3.3% higher on average in 2025 than in 2024. Across the EU the rise was 4.1%.⁷

This measures how prices changed, not what a stay costs, so check the current price when you book. Accommodation services cover hotels, motels and inns; holiday centres, campsites and youth hostels; and other places to stay.

What are Norway's public holidays in 2026 and 2027?

In Norway, public holidays fall on 12 days in 2026 and 11 in 2027.⁸ In 2026, 4 of those days are a Saturday or Sunday.⁸ Sundays are also holy days in Norwegian law.

We took these from the law or the government's own list, not from a holiday website, and worked out the dates that move each year, such as Easter, from the rules in the law. Regional and local holidays are not included.

What is the weather like in Oslo each month?

Averaged over 1991–2020, the OSLO BLINDERN weather station, which we use for Oslo, is warmest in July, with an average high of 22.7 °C, and coldest in January and February, with an average low of −4.7 °C. Its wettest month is August (103 mm of rain on average) and its driest March (41 mm).⁹

In January, Norway's quietest month, the station's average high is 0.1 °C and its average low −4.7 °C, with 58 mm of rain. In July, the busiest, the average high is 22.7 °C.⁹

In January the station averages 10.0 days with at least 1 mm of rain.⁹ On 15 January the sun is up for about 6 h 45 min there, against 18 h on 15 July.¹⁰

Thirty-year averages from one weather station, OSLO BLINDERN, which we use for Oslo. They describe a typical year at that station, not a forecast, and weather varies across Norway. A rainy day is one with at least 1 mm of rain. The source has no complete sunshine figures for this station, so we show none. Daylight is not measured: it is our calculation of the time from sunrise to sunset.

June or September? May or October?

September was quieter than June, at 8.4% against 11.9%.

October was quieter than May, at 6.5% against 8.2%.

These compare months at similar distances from the summer peak. For typical weather in Oslo, see the weather section.

What these figures cannot tell you

These figures are good at one thing: showing when a country's registered tourist accommodation fills up. Four things they cannot do.

They miss some small places. The counts cover hotels, holiday and short-stay accommodation and campsites, but countries may exclude establishments with fewer than ten bed places, so small guesthouses can be missing.²

Nights are not queues. A national monthly total cannot see how busy one old town, beach or museum is on a given day.

Tourist nights say nothing about weather or prices. The weather section uses 30-year averages from one station, not a forecast. The price section shows how accommodation prices changed, not what a stay costs.

They are one year. These are 2025 figures. Patterns shift from year to year, and Eurostat revises its data as countries update their returns.

The full year

Total for 2025: 40,590,017 nights, 34.9% of them by guests living abroad. The two busiest months are marked. "From abroad" is the share of that month's nights spent by guests living outside Norway.