Paris in December: Weather, Events and the Best Tours

Is December a good time to visit Paris?

December is the month to stop resisting the dark and build the trip around it. With sunset near 16:55, Paris spends more of your waking visit lit up than in daylight. Plan two outdoor things before lunch, then treat 17:00 onwards as the main event rather than the end of the day.

Eight hours and twenty-one minutes is the shortest daylight figure in this guide, almost exactly six hours less than May. Fighting that produces a bad trip. Accepting it produces a very good one, because Paris is the rare city that is unambiguously better looking illuminated, and in December you get the illuminated version at four in the afternoon instead of at eleven at night.

A small piece of astronomy makes December less bleak than the headline suggests. Paris does not get steadily darker all month. The earliest sunset of the year happens around the middle of December, at roughly 16:52, and by 31 December the sun is already setting a few minutes later. The mornings keep getting darker into January, but the evenings start recovering before Christmas.

The weather is the genuinely hard part, and worse than November on every measure that matters. December brings 76mm of rain across thirteen wet days, tied with May as the wettest month of the ten by volume, at 8.7C highs and 3.5C lows. That combination, cold and damp and dark, is why the successful December itineraries are the ones weighted towards heated interiors and boats rather than towards walking.

Paris weather in December

December averages 8.7C highs and 3.5C lows with 76mm of rain across thirteen wet days, the wettest month of the ten alongside May. Daylight is 8 hours 21 minutes mid-month with sunset near 16:55. Snow that settles in central Paris is rare, at most a day or two in a typical winter.

Temperature, rainfall and wet days: Open-Meteo ERA5 reanalysis for Paris, ten-year observed means. Daylight and sunset: day length computed for Paris (48.86N, 2.35E) on the 15th of each month.

Thirteen wet days at 8.7C is the least forgiving combination in the guide, and it is worth being direct about it: a Paris December can hand you a fortnight of low grey cloud and persistent drizzle. What it very rarely hands you is snow. Central Paris sits low and close to the Atlantic, and settling snow is unusual and short-lived. Plan for wet rather than for white.

The daylight arithmetic is the thing to actually schedule around. Sunrise is not until about 08:40, so there is no early start to be had, and sunset is around 16:55. Your realistic outdoor window is roughly 09:30 to 16:00, which is six and a half hours. That is enough for two substantial things, not four, and any December plan with four outdoor stops in it will fail.

The upside is the one Paris is famous for. Once the lights are on, the Seine reflects the illuminated facades of the Louvre, the Conciergerie and the Institut de France, and the Eiffel Tower runs its five-minute sparkle on the hour after dark. In August you have to stay up until half past ten to see that. In December it is happening while you are still deciding where to eat.

Crowds, prices and what to book ahead

December splits into two different cities. The first ten days are quiet and reasonably priced. From roughly the second weekend the Christmas market, shopping and New Year demand takes over, and the week between Christmas and New Year is the second busiest of the ten months after October.

If you want a cheap December, come in the first ten days. Rates are still close to the November floor, the museums are calm, and the Christmas lights are already up on the main boulevards, so you get the seasonal look without the seasonal price. That window closes fast: by the second weekend the Boulevard Haussmann department stores are the busiest retail environment in France and the Metro around Chaussee d'Antin is genuinely difficult.

Christmas Day 2026 falls on a Friday, which produces a long weekend and makes the 24th to the 27th the tightest stretch for restaurant tables. Book anywhere you actually care about eating well before you travel. Museum tickets are less of a problem, because the two biggest, the Louvre and Versailles, are shut on the 25th anyway.

The New Year is its own event. Seine cruise operators run New Year sailings, the Champs-Elysees hosts the public countdown, and the Metro runs late on the 31st. Those sailings sell out earliest of anything in the Paris December calendar, so if a New Year cruise is the plan, treat it as the first booking rather than the last.

The best tours in Paris in December

Ranked for December: everything that works after dark, is heated, or is genuinely improved by illumination goes to the top, because you only have six and a half hours of usable daylight. Prices, ratings and review counts were checked against live GetYourGuide listings on 28 July 2026.

1. Evening Lights Cruise with Bateaux-Mouches

4.3 out of 5 from 2,199 verified GetYourGuide reviews • from £15 • 70 minutes - 1.5 hours

The single best-value booking of the Paris December. Sunset is around 16:55, so a 17:30 sailing gives you seventy minutes of fully illuminated river for £15, and the Eiffel Tower sparkles for five minutes on the hour after dark. Board at Pont de l'Alma, Port de la Conference in the 8th; that is the Bateaux-Mouches pier and not the Eiffel Tower one.

Best for in December: The lit city at 17:30, for £15

Check availabilityRead our full review

2. Evening River Cruise with Music

4.4 out of 5 from 25,044 verified GetYourGuide reviews • from £21 • 1 hour

Ranked up hard for the season. With eight hours twenty-one minutes of daylight there is no such thing as a wasted evening in December, and an hour on a heated boat with the monuments lit is a better use of 17:00 than anything happening on the pavements at 3.5C.

Best for in December: A second, different evening on the water

Check availabilityRead our full review

3. 3-Course Dinner Cruise on the Seine with Live Music

4.7 out of 5 from 8,452 verified GetYourGuide reviews • from £98 • 2.5 hours

A two and a half hour dinner cruise from the Eiffel Tower quay is close to the ideal December booking: heated, seated, and lit for the whole sailing rather than only at the end as it would be in July. It also removes the problem of finding a table in the busiest restaurant fortnight of the year.

Best for in December: Solving dinner and the view together

Check availabilityRead our full review

4. Versailles Skip-the-Line Palace and Gardens Tour

4.7 out of 5 from 11,551 verified GetYourGuide reviews • from £49 • 2 hours

The fountains stopped on 1 November, so a December Versailles trip is entirely about the state rooms, which is exactly what this guided tour delivers. The palace runs a seasonal King's Tour programme from 12 December to 2 January, and the Hall of Mirrors in low winter light with a fraction of the summer crowd is worth the train. Closed Mondays and on 25 December.

Best for in December: Winter Versailles, indoors

Check availabilityRead our full review

5. Musée d’Orsay Skip-the-Line Tour with Guide

4.8 out of 5 from 1,177 verified GetYourGuide reviews • from £60 • 1.5 - 2.5 hours

The highest-rated tour we sell at 4.8, and the Orsay's Thursday late opening to 21:45 is worth more in December than in any other month, because the alternative use of that evening is standing outside in the rain at 3.5C. Note it is closed on Mondays and on 25 December.

Best for in December: Thursday late opening in the dark

Check availabilityRead our full review

6. Disneyland® Paris 1-Day Ticket

4.6 out of 5 from 56,303 verified GetYourGuide reviews • from £44 • Varies

Ranked up for the season, unusually. Disneyland Paris runs its Christmas programme through December, and a park built around lights and evening parades genuinely benefits from a 16:55 sunset. French school holidays begin in the second half of the month, so the first two weeks are much the calmer half.

Best for in December: The one park that is better in December

Check availabilityRead our full review

7. Mona Lisa & Louvre Masterpieces Tour

4.7 out of 5 from 7,461 verified GetYourGuide reviews • from £50 • 1 - 3.5 hours

Three hours of reserved-access guided Louvre is the right shape for a December afternoon that has no daylight left in it after four. Take the Wednesday or Friday late opening to 21:00. The museum is closed on Tuesdays, and on Friday 25 December.

Best for in December: A guided route through the dark afternoon

Check availabilityRead our full review

8. Moulin Rouge Cabaret Show Ticket with Champagne

4.7 out of 5 from 17,909 verified GetYourGuide reviews • from £100 • 2 hours

Thirteen wet days and 3.5C nights make a fixed indoor show with a drink an easy call in December. Its other December virtue is certainty: nothing about it can be affected by weather, which is not true of anything else on this list that happens outdoors.

Best for in December: A guaranteed warm, dry, seated evening

Check availabilityRead our full review

9. Catacombs Entry & Seine Cruise with Audio Guide

4.5 out of 5 from 1,483 verified GetYourGuide reviews • from £98 • 3 hours

The catacombs hold around 14C all year, which in December means it is genuinely warmer twenty metres down than it is on the street at 8.7C. Paired with a Seine cruise, this covers the two things that work best in a Paris winter: underground and on the water.

Best for in December: Warmer underground than above

Check availabilityRead our full review

10. Notre-Dame Cathedral Guided Tour, Inside and Out

4.7 out of 5 from 1,676 verified GetYourGuide reviews • from £18 • 1 hour

Advent and Christmas are the liturgical high point of the cathedral year, and general entry to Notre-Dame is free. What the £18 buys is an hour of guided commentary, not queue-jumping: you wait in the ordinary line with your guide, which the listing puts at ten to twenty minutes, and no reservation is needed or offered.

Best for in December: A cathedral in its own season

Check availabilityRead our full review

Deliberately absent from the December ten: the fourteen-hour Mont-Saint-Michel coach day, the Giverny day trip, the open-top sightseeing bus and the Versailles Full Access passport. Mont-Saint-Michel is the clearest case in the guide: a fourteen-hour trip into 8 hours 21 minutes of daylight means most of the journey and much of the site are experienced in the dark. Giverny is shut for the winter. The bus is an open upper deck at 3.5C. And the Full Access passport is the ticket whose headline feature, the Musical Fountains, stopped running on 1 November, so the guided palace tour is the better December buy. Gaps worth admitting: we do not sell a Christmas market tour, a Champs-Elysees lights tour or a New Year Seine sailing, and all three are things a December visitor will reasonably look for.

Events and festivals in December 2026

December is built around light and closures. The Chateau de Versailles runs a seasonal King's Tour from 12 December to 2 January, Seine operators run New Year sailings, and both the Louvre and Versailles are closed on Friday 25 December.

The Versailles King's Tour running from 12 December to 2 January is the strongest dated reason to go to Versailles in winter rather than summer, and it is precisely the sort of thing that gets left out of general Paris guides. It is a seasonal programme at the palace across the Christmas and New Year period, and it exists only in a window that most itineraries treat as the worst time to make the trip.

Christmas Day falls on a Friday in 2026, which turns the 25th to the 27th into a long weekend and puts real pressure on restaurant tables. It also means the two big-ticket sites, the Louvre and the Chateau de Versailles, are both shut on the 25th, along with the Musee d'Orsay. If you have four days over Christmas, that is one of them gone for museums, so plan the 25th around the river, a meal and the lit streets instead.

New Year sailings on the Seine are the most competitive booking of the Paris December. Cruise operators run through the winter and put on special New Year departures, and those sell out well before the ordinary evening ones. We do not sell a New Year sailing ourselves, so if that is the plan, book direct with the operator and do it early.

What is closed in December

Friday 25 December closes the Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay and the Chateau de Versailles on the same day. Giverny and the Versailles fountains have been shut since 1 November. Everything else, including the Seine cruises, runs right through the winter.

Weekly closing days and fixed holiday closures read directly from the Louvre, Musee d'Orsay and Chateau de Versailles official sites on 29 July 2026. Seasonal opening dates for 2026 are set by each site and can move, so confirm before you book a non-refundable trip around one.

Christmas Day is the concentrated closure of the Paris December. On Friday 25 December the Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay and the Chateau de Versailles are all shut. That is a genuinely significant loss on a short trip, and it catches people out because Paris otherwise gives the impression of running as normal through the season. The Versailles gardens and park stay open, which is the one useful exception.

December 2026 also opens on a Tuesday, which means five Tuesdays and therefore five days without the Louvre, on the 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th. Combined with the 25th that is six December days on which the Louvre is not available. Anyone with a four-night December trip should check their dates against that list before assuming the museum is a given.

The point worth ending on is what stays open. Seine cruises run all winter, including New Year sailings, and they are the December experience that is not merely surviving the season but actively improved by it. The same is true of the catacombs, which are warmer than the street this month, and of the cabarets, which are entirely indoors. Paris in December is not a diminished city, it is a differently shaped one.

What to wear and pack for Paris in December

Pack for 8.7C days, 3.5C nights, thirteen wet days and a 16:55 sunset. What Paris in December needs is waterproofing and warmth for standing still, because you will spend more evening than daylight outside and much of it queueing or looking at lights.

The specific December problem is standing rather than walking. Christmas markets, illuminated boulevards, waiting for a boat: all of these involve being stationary outdoors at 3.5C, which is a completely different demand from walking at 3.5C. That means a proper insulated coat, gloves and a hat rather than the mid-weight layers that carry you through November.

Snow is not the risk; rain is. Thirteen wet days on cold pavement means waterproof footwear is not optional, and the museum-heavy shape of a December day means those same shoes need to be comfortable on hard floors for several hours. A single pair that does both is the most important thing in the bag.

• •An insulated coat, for standing still at 3.5C rather than walking
• •Gloves and a hat; you will be outside in the dark more than in the light
• •Waterproof shoes that stay comfortable on museum floors
• •Restaurant bookings made before you travel, especially 24 to 27 December
• •A phone charged for long lit evenings; sunset is around 16:55

How we chose these tours

We rank on seasonal fit first and verified GetYourGuide rating second, so the experiences that actually work in December's daylight, rainfall and opening calendar sit highest. Every price, rating and review count on this page was checked against the live listing on 28 July 2026.

1. Seasonal fit first. Each of the 26 tours we stock is scored against December on daylight hours, sunset time, wet days, temperature and whether the thing it visits is actually open. A tour that cannot deliver its own selling point this month drops out, and we say which ones and why.
2. Then rating, then review volume. Where two tours fit the month equally well, the higher verified GetYourGuide rating wins, and review count breaks any remaining tie. Both numbers are public and you can check them against the listing.
3. Nothing is invented. Prices, star ratings and review counts come from the live product page. We do not publish an opening date, closure or festival date we could not confirm from the venue itself, and where a 2026 date has not been published yet we say so instead of guessing.
4. We say what we do not sell. Where the obvious thing to do in December is not something we can book you onto, it goes in the text as advice rather than being quietly left out or replaced with a product that does not fit.
5. We earn a commission. Booking links go to GetYourGuide and pay us if you book. That does not change the ranking, and it is why the reasoning on every entry is written out rather than left implied.

FAQs about Paris in December