Iceland Camping Season by Month: How Many Campsites Are Open in Each

Short answer

The Icelandic camping season runs from 23 campsites open in January to 112 in July, and almost all of the movement happens in two short bursts. 57 sites open in May and 26 more in June; 50 shut in September and 22 in October. Right now, in September, 101 are open. Every figure is out of the 112 campsites whose published season can be read as dates — 180 of our 315 publish no season at all and are in none of these counts.

What is it doing at Skaftafell right now?

At the Skaftafell campsite it is 4°C, feels like 1°C, with wind of 2 m/s gusting to 2 m/s and partly cloudy. Daylight today runs 05:48–20:28 (14 h 40 m). Skaftafell is one of the 23 sites open all year, on the route nearly every trip drives. The daylight figure is the number that changes most between the months in the table below.

Data verified 1 September 2026, 01:30 · source: Open-Meteo, at the campsite’s own coordinates · refreshes every 10 minutes

Campsites open by month, out of the 112 that publish a readable season

Month	Open	Closed	Opening	Closing
January	23	89	—	—
February	23	89	—	—
March	26	86	3	—
April	27	85	2	—
May	76	36	57	—
June	109	3	26	—
July	112	0	1	—
August	112	0	—	11
September	98	14	—	50
October	38	74	—	22
November	26	86	—	4
December	23	89	—	2

Open is how many are open on the 15th of that month. Opening and closing are how many seasons start and end in it. Every number is derived at page render from the season each operator publishes on tjalda.is, not from an average or a rule of thumb.

What the shape of the year means for a trip

May is two different months. 57 seasons start in it — more than any other month — but most of them start on or after the 15th. A trip in the first week of May is planning around roughly 27 sites; a trip in the last week is planning around 76. No guide that says “campsites open in May” is telling you which half.

June to August is flat, and that is the useful part. The count sits at 109–112 for three months, so within that window the choice of campsite is genuinely open and the constraint becomes whether the site is full rather than whether it is open. It is also when the highland sites are reachable at all, which depends on the F-road rather than the campsite.

September is the cliff. 50 seasons end in September and 22 in October — together, 72 of the 112 readable seasons end in those eight weeks. The count goes 98 → 38 → 26. This is the single most common way a camping trip goes wrong: the itinerary was built in summer, from a list that was true in summer.

November to April is a short list, not an empty one. 23 sites hold through the winter, all of them because their own operator publishes an all-year season. They are named individually on the winter campsites page, with the one that is open only by arrangement marked as such.

One thing this page deliberately does not do is tell you what the weather is like in each month — that is a different question with a different answer, and it lives on Iceland weather by month.

Every campsite, whatever the month

All 315 campsites on the interactive map — tap a pin for that site's own published season, facilities and price.

98 open this monthOpen the map

How these numbers were counted

Each campsite publishes its opening season as free text — 135 of our 315 publish one, in about 120 distinct formats, in a mix of English and Icelandic, some with typos, some with a year on them. Our parser reads a season only when it finds two recognised month tokens in order, or an explicit all-year phrase. Anything else is left as unknown, which puts 23 campsites outside every count on this page.

A season carrying a year older than the current one is never used for a verdict — a 2025 season rendered as though it were this year’s is a specific bug we shipped once and will not ship again. The remaining 180 campsites publish no season text at all; they are counted as exactly that and never assumed either way.

Every month is measured on the 15th. That choice has consequences worth naming: a season running 1–10 September counts as closed in September, and a season starting on 20 May counts as closed in May. Measuring at the edges instead would inflate both shoulder months, which is roughly what “May to September” does.

Frequently
asked questions

When is camping season in Iceland?

June to early September for practical purposes, and the numbers say why: 57 campsites open in May and 26 more in June, taking the count from 27 in April to 109 in June. It peaks at 112 in July and holds there for two months. Then 50 sites close in September and 22 more in October. All figures are out of the 112 campsites that publish a season we can read.

How many campsites are open in Iceland in May?

76 of 112, up from 27 in April — May is the single biggest month for openings, with 57 sites starting their season in it. That average hides the shape of the month: most of those seasons start on or after 15 May, so the first half of May is closer to April than to June.

What is the worst month to camp in Iceland?

January on the numbers — 23 campsites open, the year's floor. But the more useful answer is October, because that is where the drop is: 22 sites close during it and the count falls from 98 to 38. A trip planned for late September on a map drawn in August will find a different country.

Do Iceland campsites open earlier in a warm spring?

Some do, and none of them tell us. The published seasons on this page are calendar dates the operators set in advance; they are not a live open/closed state, and a site that opens a fortnight early does not update its listing. In the highlands the constraint is not the campsite at all but the F-road that reaches it, which the road authority opens when it has dried out — that date moves by weeks between years.

How were these numbers counted?

From the opening-season text each campsite publishes on tjalda.is, parsed only where it is unambiguous. 135 of our 315 campsites publish a season; 112 of those are readable as dates and are what every count here is out of. 23 publish something we cannot read into a date and are excluded rather than guessed at, and 180 publish nothing. Each month is measured on the 15th, so a season ending on 10 September counts as closed in September.

Is there anywhere to camp in Iceland out of season?

Yes — 23 campsites publish an all-year season, and they are listed individually on our winter page. That is roughly one campsite in five of the ones that publish a season at all, and they cluster in the west, the south and around Egilsstaðir. There are none in the interior, because the roads there are shut.