By late September the summer crowd thins out fast, and Tenerife spends October working through the year's best month without telling anyone. The sea, having spent all summer soaking up heat, is at its warmest around now (often close to 23°C) while the coast settles into the low-to-mid twenties by day. Nobody is sweating on the beach and nobody needs a jumper at dinner.
The reason we push October on anyone who'll listen is the guachinches. These are the small, often unmarked family taverns that open once their own wine harvest is in, usually from late September through the winter. October is when the season is properly underway but not yet picked over by everyone who found the good ones years ago.
The south coast resorts, Los Cristianos, Costa Adeje, are never truly empty, but October is when you can get a table without booking three weeks out, when the sunbeds aren't gone by nine, and when the north coast towns feel like they belong to the people who actually live there. If you'd rather have a real conversation with a restaurant owner than fight for a spot on the beach, this is your window.
July and August on the trails through Anaga or up on Teide can be hard going: heat, glare, crowded paths from early morning. October brings the temperature down to something a lot more comfortable for anyone covering real distance on foot, and the light in the afternoons is better for photos too.
It isn't flawless. It's shoulder season, so the odd squally day rolls through, mostly in the north. Pack a light layer for evenings at altitude (Teide's summit can be properly cold even when the coast is balmy) and don't assume every restaurant is open. Some genuinely close for a few weeks between the summer and winter seasons.
If you're weighing up when to come, October and the first half of November are the two months we point most people toward. Everything else is up to what you actually want the week to look like.
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