When to surf · Algarve
Sagres in September
The month a lot of people rate as the best of the year. Consistent swell returns, the water is still warm, the wind drops and the crowds thin. Everything the coast does well lines up at once.
Sagres
Sagres almost always has something, because you pick a coast by the wind, but autumn to spring brings the cleanest and biggest west-coast swell. Summer is smaller and very windy, though the south-facing beaches stay usable. Water is cooler here than the rest of the Algarve because of upwelling.
Autumn
Spots here
Sagres
Beliche
A cliff-ringed beach between Sagres and Cabo de São Vicente, reached by a long stairway. More exposed and more powerful than Tonel, with a fast, hollow wave for confident surfers.
Advanced surfersAutumn to spring
Mareta
The south-facing town beach at Sagres, tucked out of the west wind and swell. Gentle and forgiving, the main learner wave in Sagres and the go-to when the west coast is too big or too windy.
BeginnersAutumn to spring for swell; sheltered enough to surf on windy west-coast days
Martinhal
A sheltered bay just east of Sagres where the summer north wind blows offshore across flat water: one of the few windsurfing spots in the western Algarve. Hardly ever any surf, and that is the point.
All levelsSummer afternoons, when the nortada blows
Tonel
The west-facing beach at Sagres, a short walk from town. Far more exposed than the south-coast beaches, so it holds swell when everywhere sheltered is flat, but it is powerful and shifty.
IntermediatesAutumn to spring; the west coast is biggest and cleanest then