VacationSelector

Cannes or Madrid?

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

Your match

Cannes
49
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather with your weighting.

Madrid
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on nightlife and good for families 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.

CannesMadrid
Beaches & swimming. Cannes leads by 73 points.73
CannesMadrid
Score730
Swim season months40
Beaches 10 km684
Coast distance1 km305 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 33 points.33
CannesMadrid
Score5083
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4733,508
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1928
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 39 points.39
CannesMadrid
Score3675
Museums within 10 km3197
Museums within 2 km of centre559
Share of museums within 2 km %1661
Unesco sites within 50 km24
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 53 points.53
CannesMadrid
Score2881
Drinking venues within 4 km1882,414
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1641,498
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8762
Nightclubs within 4 km19341
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 30 points.30
CannesMadrid
Score3363
Protected land share 50 km %1719
Landscape blanket share 50 km %160
Land share of disc %53100
Park area within 2 km13 hectares187 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 52 points.52
CannesMadrid
Score2577
Tourist attractions within 2 km761
Park area within 2 km13 hectares187 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km33
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 19 points.19
CannesMadrid
Score5675
Notable places within 2 km95288
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 9 points.9
CannesMadrid
Score6271
Price level global73.760.8
Daily budget€160€122
Year-round weather. Cannes leads by 2 points.2
CannesMadrid
Score7472
Monthly daytime high13.3 °C to 27.9 °C10 °C to 32.7 °C
Monthly rainfall13 mm to 138 mm9 mm to 64 mm
Dry months37
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
Cannes
13
14
15
17
21
25
28
28
25
21
17
14
Madrid
10
12
16
19
23
29
33
32
27
20
14
10
Sea temperature, °C
Cannes
14
13
14
15
18
21
24
25
23
20
18
16
Madrid
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Cannes
74
53
51
69
42
34
13
18
84
124
138
91
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Daylight, hours per day
Cannes
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cannes
5
6
7
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
5
5
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. Cannes: 1991-2020 normals, Nice (18 km from centre). Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCannesMadrid
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€78-111
NCE · 20 km
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 55 m
€76-223
NCE · 20 km
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 10 m
€69-133
NCE · 20 km
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€83-135
NCE · 20 km
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
€170-248
NCE · 20 km
2 h 25 m
€175-213
MAD · 14 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 25 m
€153-221
1 stop
NCE · 20 km
1 h 15 m
€40-87
MAD · 14 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
3 h 55 m
no fares
NCE · 20 km
2 h 50 m
€109-153
MAD · 14 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 20 m
€375-433
NCE · 20 km
7 h 20 m
€356-444
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 10 m
€666-799
1 stop
NCE · 20 km
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 146 km
12 h 25 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

MeasureCannesMadrid
Official languageFrenchSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m663 m
Main airportNice-Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE)20 km from centre129 non-stop destinationsAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureCannesMadrid
City population74,3503,506,730
People per km²3,7935,801
Museums within 10 km1688
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km24
Distinct cuisines in the centre38106
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cannes 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). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

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.