The first weekend of November: where to fly for under £100

In short

• The weekend of 31 October – 2 November 2026 falls between Halloween and the start of the Christmas rush: it is the cheapest window left this year.
• In mid-September we were seeing one-way fares from London under £35 to Ireland, Spain, France and Albania.
• The return day moves the price more than the destination does: coming back on Monday is often cheaper than Sunday evening.
• In early November geography decides the trip: southern Spain, Malta, Cyprus and the Canaries still have proper daylight and warmth; central Europe is cold, but the museums are half empty.
• Three nights is enough for two or three cities if you land somewhere with good buses — Vienna, Budapest, Kraków and the Baltics are made for it.

Why this weekend is cheap

Late October and early November sit in the dead zone of the travel year: the summer leisure market has gone, ski season has not started, and Christmas fares have not been released into the expensive brackets yet. Add the fact that many English school half terms end that week, and you get a few days when planes still fly full schedules but demand drops.

One warning if you are travelling with children: half term dates differ between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, so the cheap seats disappear at very different speeds depending on the airport you leave from. Check nearby airports too — the price gap in this period is often bigger than the train fare to get there.

Where it is cheap to fly

These are prices we actually recorded from London Gatwick between 15 and 19 September 2026, for departures between 29 October and 3 November: one way, per person, cabin bag only. They are not forecasts and they move by the hour, but they show what is out there without any tricks.

Double them for a rough return fare: under £80 both ways is comfortably possible to Ireland, Spain and Albania, and with a bit of luck to Hungary as well.

Four ideas for three nights

1. Málaga and Granada, for summer after summer ends

Early November in Andalusia is the safest bet on the continent for sunshine: clear days, 20-22 °C, and the sea still swimmable at midday if you are brave. Three nights fit Málaga plus Granada, linked by frequent buses in about an hour and three quarters.

2. Tirana and the Albanian coast, where the budget goes furthest

The flight is cheap and so is everything after it: eating and sleeping in Albania cost less than almost anywhere else in Europe. It is still 17-18 °C in the day. Three nights cover Tirana plus a run to Durrës or Krujë, both around half an hour away by bus or minibus.

3. Ireland, for a weekend that needs no plan

Shannon and Cork are the two cheapest doors into the west of Ireland, and both put you within an hour or two of the Cliffs of Moher and the Wild Atlantic Way. Pack for rain and stop worrying about it.

4. Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest: three cities, one flight

The idea we like most, because one flight buys you three capitals: land in Vienna, sleep two nights, take the bus to Bratislava (just over an hour) and then to Budapest (two and a half hours), and fly home from there. November is cold, but the coffee houses and the Budapest thermal baths are exactly where you want to be when it rains. We wrote it up in full in Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest in one trip.

What a long weekend actually costs

The flight is only part of the bill. A realistic budget for three nights, per person, without cutting the corners that ruin a trip:

The hold bag is the line that does the most damage in proportion: on a £30 flight it can cost as much as the ticket. For three nights a cabin bag is usually enough — see our guide to low-cost cabin baggage.

How to pay less, without giving anything up

• Try coming back on Monday instead of Sunday evening. In our data for those dates the Monday return is regularly among the cheapest: everyone wants to be home on Sunday night.
• Leave Thursday evening or early Friday. Friday afternoon flights are the most expensive of the week.
• Check nearby airports, at both ends. London has six; and it works on arrival too — Charleroi for Brussels, Girona for Barcelona, Bergamo for Milan.
• Build the trip from two one-way flights. Two singles, even on two different airlines, often beat a return on one.
• Leave the destination open. If getting away matters more than a specific place, the gap between the cheapest and the priciest destination that weekend runs into hundreds of pounds.
• Don't sit refreshing the page. Prices move in brackets, not by the minute: the trick is noticing when they drop, not watching constantly.

If what you want is sunshine

If cold doesn't scare you, this is the best time of year for central European capitals: same museums, same cafés, half the people in front of you — and the Christmas markets start opening in the weeks straight after (see our guide to Christmas markets on a budget).

The easy way: let someone watch for you

For a weekend like this the useful window is narrow: the cheap seats on those dates sell out, reappear when someone cancels, and vanish again within hours. Checking eight airline websites every evening is not a plan, it is a second job.

FlyDown does it for you. Tell it where you fly from, how much you want to spend and which days: it checks Ryanair, Wizz Air, easyJet, Vueling, Volotea and Transavia every few hours and writes to you when something lands under your budget, with the price history so you know whether it is genuinely a deal. And for every flight it finds, it also plans the bus hops to the cities nearby.