“Summer may be coming to an end but that doesn’t mean holidays have to also. Our annual ranking of the top autumn getaway destinations yielded some interesting results, particularly that no location has retained its position from last year’s ranking,” shares Aleksandrs Buraks at DiscoverCars.com.

“Our inclusion of five new cities was useful for further comparison between countries, as we wanted to give travelers as many options as possible when considering the location of their next autumn escape,” he adds.

This is the second year DiscoverCars.com has completed this ranking, using the same 10 cities from last year’s analysis, plus five new locations to display how the results have altered over the past year. The destinations were then scored out of 120 and ranked accordingly.

The top five destinations for this year’s European autumn getaway destinations were topped by Barcelona, receiving a score of 98 out of 120 points with the highest number of cheap restaurants and budget hotels. 

Lisbon and Berlin ranked second and third, respectively, both countries moving up one place on the ranking in comparison to last year. Lisbon scored 94 out 120 possible points, while Berlin came close with 89 points.

Budapest ranked fourth overall, receiving 85 points out of 120. DiscoverCars.com determined that the capital has an average of 56 mm of rainfall during the autumn months, the second lowest out of all cities investigated. There is about 11 hours of daylight in the fall months, with the temperature falling around 11°C.

The average price of a flight from Heathrow to Budapest costs GBP 160, while a week-long hotel stay is priced at about GBP 600. Renting a car for a week costs around GBP 249, with nearly 800 affordable restaurants within the city.

Gdansk, Poland, finished in fifth place with a score of 81 out of 120 points. The Polish city ranked above popular tourist destinations such as Amsterdam and Florence.

Completing the top 10, the remaining cities were Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Bilbao, Bordeaux, and Bruges, in that order.

The complete ranking is available here.

Photo by Krénn Imre Photography