VacationSelector

Lisbon or Madrid?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Lisbon
68
match

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

Madrid
66
match

Wins on nightlife and sights concentration with your weighting.

What matters to you?

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

The verdict

Choose Lisbon if the sea matters: 24 beaches within reach, and a summer that stays close to dry, with the water at its warmest, 19°C, in September.

Choose Madrid if you want the denser city: far more bars and clubs, sights packed more tightly around the centre, and more park space and theme parks within reach.

Scoreboard

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

LisbonMadrid
Beaches & swimming. Lisbon leads by 57 points.57
LisbonMadrid
Score570
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km244
Coast distance2 km305 km
Water distance2 km—
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 3 points.3
LisbonMadrid
Score8083
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,4963,508
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3128
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 5 points.5
LisbonMadrid
Score7075
Museums within 10 km12497
Museums within 2 km of centre5459
Share of museums within 2 km %4461
Unesco sites within 50 km34
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 16 points.16
LisbonMadrid
Score6581
Drinking venues within 4 km1,2252,414
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre9561,498
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7862
Nightclubs within 4 km65341
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 7 points.7
LisbonMadrid
Score5663
Protected land share 50 km %1119
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %54100
Park area within 2 km77 hectares187 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 8 points.8
LisbonMadrid
Score6977
Tourist attractions within 2 km8261
Park area within 2 km77 hectares187 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km13
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 9 points.9
LisbonMadrid
Score6675
Notable places within 2 km169288
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lisbon leads by 3 points.3
LisbonMadrid
Score7471
Price level global55.960.8
Daily budget€109€122
Year-round weather. Lisbon leads by 6 points.6
LisbonMadrid
Score7872
Monthly daytime high14.9 °C to 28.4 °C10 °C to 32.7 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 121 mm9 mm to 64 mm
Dry months47
0255075100

Where they differ

Lisbon's advantage is the coast: 24 beaches nearby against Madrid's 4, though neither has a month of sea at 21°C or more, so swimming is a cool-water affair. It also has somewhat more tourist attractions near the centre.

Madrid is the stronger night city, with about twice as many places to drink and many times as many nightclubs, most of them near the centre. Sightseeing is more compact too: roughly twice as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, and museums sitting tightly around it.

Where they are alike

Both cities eat well. Madrid has somewhat more restaurants near the centre, but the range of kitchens is similar in each, so neither will feel narrow over a week.

Beyond that, the two are close on museums and heritage: Lisbon has somewhat more museums, Madrid 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Lisbon's 3. The national daily budget estimates also sit close, €109 for Portugal and €122 for Spain.

Which traveller are you?

Families lean to Madrid: three theme parks within reach against Lisbon's one, and more park space near the centre. Lisbon counters with somewhat more tourist attractions near the centre and easy beach days.

Anyone planning late evenings should take Madrid, which has about twice as many places to drink and many times as many nightclubs, nearly all near the centre, alongside the more compact sightseeing core.

Swimmers and coast-walkers want Lisbon: 24 beaches nearby against Madrid's 4, though the sea peaks at 19°C, so it stays bracing. Madrid answers with more protected land around it.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures, €109 and €122, are national estimates of restaurant and hotel price levels, not measurements of Lisbon or Madrid. A capital can sit well away from its country's average, by more than the gap between them, so neither number tells you what a week in either city will cost.

A coast advantage is not the same as swimming weather: Lisbon has many beaches nearby, but the sea never reaches 21°C, and the months when it is warmest are also the driest and busiest. Madrid's warm side hides a summer peak of 33°C, uncomfortable for a day on foot.

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
Lisbon
15
16
19
20
23
26
28
28
26
23
18
15
Madrid
10
12
16
19
23
29
33
32
27
20
14
10
Sea temperature, °C
Lisbon
15
15
15
15
16
18
18
19
19
18
17
16
Madrid
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Lisbon
104
73
72
67
53
13
3
7
36
108
121
102
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Daylight, hours per day
Lisbon
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Lisbon
5
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
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. Lisbon: 1991-2020 normals, Lisboa / Geof (1.1 km from centre). Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Lisbon is at its best from June to September: highs of 26-28°C, very little rain, and the sea at its warmest, 19°C, by the end of that run. Its wet months are October to January, 102-121mm.

Madrid suits May, June and September, when highs run 23-29°C and rain is modest. July at 33°C is hard work by day, and Madrid's autumn and winter stay drier than Lisbon's, which makes it the steadier choice outside summer.

Getting there

Flying fromLisbonMadrid
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 25 m
€118-145
LIS · 7 km
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 30 m
€112-185
LIS · 7 km
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 50 m
€74-97
LIS · 7 km
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 35 m
€124-144
LIS · 7 km
2 h 0 m
€53-86
MAD · 14 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 50 m
€120-145
LIS · 7 km
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 50 m
€167-189
LIS · 7 km
2 h 25 m
€175-213
MAD · 14 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
10 h 0 m
€744-1049
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
10 h 30 m
€636-955
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 0 m
€621-718
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
DohaDOH
7 h 30 m
no fares
LIS · 7 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
SeoulICN, GMP
12 h 55 m
no fares
LIS · 7 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

MeasureLisbonMadrid
Official languagePortugueseSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation100 m663 m
Main airportLisbon Humberto Delgado Airport (LIS)7 km from centre153 non-stop destinationsAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureLisbonMadrid
City population545,7963,506,730
People per km²5,4535,801
Museums within 10 km7888
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km34
Distinct cuisines in the centre106106
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone–

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Lisbon 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.