When to go

Find out which months bring genuinely swimmable water, when holidays from Poland cost least, and which islands to avoid when the summer trade wind picks up.

January is the quietest and one of the cheapest stretches of the year on the Red Sea, and the finest month of all for Luxor and Cairo. Here are the temperatures resort by resort, the cost of a week for two, the Polish school holiday dates and the entry rules by passport, including Belarusian and Ukrainian ones.

The sea, the air and the price of a week never peak in the same month in the Emirates. Here is the year broken down: when you can swim, when you can walk around, and when a hotel costs half as much.

he sea off Djerba stays at 23–25°C all month, a week for two costs around 5,500–6,600 PLN and the flight from Poland takes three hours. Here is what still works in October, what your hotel switches off after 30 September, and why the last week of the month is a different holiday from the first.

By November the Turkish sea is down to 21-22C and the Aegean resorts have closed, but the travertines, hammams and Ephesus are finally comfortable. Five destinations that beat July, the constraints that only bite now, and costs in PLN in the cheapest month of the year.

In November the Red Sea is warmer than an unheated hotel pool, and Egypt flips from a beach country to a sightseeing one. Week-by-week temperatures, the three trip formats that work, what a week costs in PLN and what changed at the Grand Egyptian Museum.

October is the only month when both halves of Egypt work at once - the Red Sea still at 26-28C and Luxor down from July's furnace heat. Five bases compared on air, sea, flights from Warsaw and cost in PLN, plus what the 2026 visa changes actually mean.