VacationSelector

Belfast or Madrid?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Belfast
48
match

Wins on beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Madrid
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on museums & heritage and nightlife with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

BelfastMadrid
Beaches & swimming. Belfast leads by 48 points.48
BelfastMadrid
Score480
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km104
Coast distance1 km305 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 27 points.27
BelfastMadrid
Score5683
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4323,508
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3128
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 46 points.46
BelfastMadrid
Score2975
Museums within 10 km1897
Museums within 2 km of centre659
Share of museums within 2 km %3361
Unesco sites within 50 km14
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 33 points.33
BelfastMadrid
Score4881
Drinking venues within 4 km5502,414
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre3481,498
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6362
Nightclubs within 4 km29341
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 10 points.10
BelfastMadrid
Score5363
Protected land share 50 km %1919
Landscape blanket share 50 km %130
Land share of disc %65100
Park area within 2 km68 hectares187 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 29 points.29
BelfastMadrid
Score4877
Tourist attractions within 2 km1661
Park area within 2 km68 hectares187 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km23
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 33 points.33
BelfastMadrid
Score4275
Notable places within 2 km43288
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 17 points.17
BelfastMadrid
Score5471
Price level global84.960.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Madrid leads by 21 points.21
BelfastMadrid
Score5172
Monthly daytime high6.9 °C to 19 °C10 °C to 32.7 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 89 mm9 mm to 64 mm
Dry months07
0255075100

When should you go?

The figures behind each month. Each row is shaded against that destination's own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that measure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
Belfast
7
8
10
12
15
18
19
19
17
13
10
7
Madrid
10
12
16
19
23
29
33
32
27
20
14
10
Sea temperature, °C
Belfast
9
8
8
8
9
11
12
13
14
14
12
11
Madrid
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Belfast
74
62
60
56
55
65
74
86
67
89
87
85
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Daylight, hours per day
Belfast
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
7
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Belfast
2
2
3
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
2
2
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Belfast: 1991-2020 normals, Belfast / Aldergrove Airport (19.4 km from centre). Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBelfastMadrid
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 15 m
€72-142
BHD · 4 km
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 50 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
1 h 20 m
€56-238
MAD · 14 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 15 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
2 h 50 m
€109-153
MAD · 14 km
Las PalmasLPA
4 h 15 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
2 h 45 m
€77-197
MAD · 14 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 35 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 25 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
11 h 30 m
€638-793
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
DohaDOH
7 h 20 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
CancunCUN
9 h 30 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km

The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-08 to 2026-10, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.

Before you go

MeasureBelfastMadrid
Official languageEnglishSpanish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation3 m663 m
Main airportGeorge Best Belfast City Airport (BHD)4 km from centre24 non-stop destinationsAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureBelfastMadrid
City population345,0063,506,730
People per km²3,0005,801
Museums within 10 km888
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km14
Distinct cuisines in the centre44106
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Belfast or Madrid somewhere new.

Browse every destination we have measured

Sources

© OpenStreetMap contributors, data available under the Open Database Licence. Place counts include data from Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA Permissive 2.0), assembled from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and other providers. Notable-place counts from Wikidata (CC0), weighted by Wikipedia language editions. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.