For an uncomplicated pregnancy the Canary Islands are one of the more sensible winter-sun choices going: a four-hour flight, no vaccinations, no malaria, safe tap water, Spanish hospitals on every island and no time-zone shift from the UK or Ireland. The things worth checking before you book are your airline's cut-off week, what your insurance actually covers, and the heat.
Nothing here is medical advice, and your midwife or GP knows your pregnancy. What this page does is set out the specific island considerations, the questions to ask, and the sources — the NHS, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and your own airline's conditions of carriage — to check them against.
The general position is reassuring. The NHS and the RCOG both take the view that flying is not harmful to you or your baby in a straightforward pregnancy, and most people find the second trimester the most comfortable time to travel: the sickness has usually settled and you are not yet uncomfortable enough for four hours in a seat to be a trial.
Airline cut-offs: the number to check first
Every airline sets its own rules, and they are not the same. The pattern across European carriers looks roughly like this:
- Up to about 28 weeks — fly as normal, no paperwork.
- From about 28 weeks — most airlines want a letter from your doctor or midwife confirming the due date, that the pregnancy is uncomplicated and that you are fit to fly. The letter usually has to be recent, often dated within a week or two of travel.
- Around 36 weeks — the usual final cut-off for a single pregnancy on a flight of this length. Some carriers apply an earlier cut-off, commonly 32 weeks, on flights over four hours, and the Canaries sit awkwardly on that boundary.
- Around 32 weeks — the typical cut-off for twins or more.
Those are patterns, not promises. Read your own airline's pregnancy policy on its website before you pay for anything, and check the return date rather than the outbound — people book a fortnight in January and discover they are past the limit on the way home. Charter and package flights sometimes differ from the same airline's scheduled service, and a connecting flight may be governed by a different carrier's rules again.
Carry your maternity notes and the fit-to-fly letter in your hand luggage, both outbound and inbound. Ground staff can and do ask at the gate, and an argument at check-in in Tenerife South with the letter in a suitcase already on the belt is nobody's idea of a holiday.
The flight itself
Four to four and a half hours from most UK and Irish airports puts this at the comfortable end of "long enough to matter". Pregnancy raises the risk of deep vein thrombosis and sitting still raises it further, so take the standard precautions properly: graduated compression stockings, an aisle seat, a walk up the cabin every hour, ankle circles while seated, and steady water rather than the one small cup they bring round.
Airport security scanners are not a problem — the walk-through arches use low-frequency electromagnetic fields rather than X-rays, and you can always ask for a manual search instead. Cabin air is very dry, so a lip balm and a bottle filled after security help more than they sound like they should.
Insurance: read the maternity clause, not the summary
This is where Canarian trips most often go wrong, and the failure is almost never the flight. Standard travel insurance treats an uncomplicated pregnancy as a normal state rather than a pre-existing condition, and will generally cover unexpected complications — but there are three traps.
- The week limit. Most policies stop covering pregnancy-related claims at a stated gestation, often somewhere between 28 and 32 weeks. It is frequently earlier than your airline's cut-off.
- Routine care is excluded. A scheduled check-up abroad is not a claim; an unexpected problem is.
- Neonatal cover. If a baby arrives early abroad, the baby is a separate person and many policies do not cover them at all. Neonatal intensive care runs into very large sums, and repatriating a premature baby by air ambulance is one of the most expensive things travel insurance ever has to do. Ask the insurer directly whether a baby born abroad is covered and for how much.
Declare the pregnancy, declare any complication you have had, and get the answers in writing. Our wider page on why insurance matters even inside Europe covers the general case; this is the situation where it matters most.
The GHIC, and what it will and will not do
A UK Global Health Insurance Card, or an Irish EHIC, gives you state healthcare in Spain on the same basis as a resident, and that explicitly includes maternity care that becomes medically necessary during your stay. It does not cover you for travelling in order to give birth, and it will not pay for a private clinic or for getting you home. It is free from the NHS website, and gov.uk is clear that it is a companion to insurance rather than a substitute for it. Using it in practice — health centres, the out-of-hours rota, what a pharmacist can hand you for heartburn — is covered on our page about medical care and pharmacies here.
On quality, you can relax. All the main islands have modern public hospitals with obstetric units, and Spain's maternity care is well regarded internationally. Do the boring preparation anyway: on your first day, note the name and address of the nearest hospital with an urgencias department, and save 112 in your phone.
Heat, and choosing the right month
Pregnancy raises your core temperature and reduces your tolerance for heat, and the Canaries have a lot of sun even when the air is mild. The archipelago's great advantage here is that it is warm rather than hot for much of the year: coastal averages sit in the low twenties through winter and rarely push far past the high twenties in summer. October to May is the comfortable window.
Two Canarian specifics. The ultraviolet here is much stronger than the temperature implies, and some pregnancies bring melasma, the darkening patches on the face that strong sun makes worse — a factor 50 and a hat are not optional, as our page on sun safety at this latitude explains. And occasionally a calima blows Saharan dust over the islands, which brings heat, haze and poor air quality for a day or two; it is unpleasant rather than dangerous, but it is a day to stay indoors with the air conditioning on.
Drink more than you would at home. The tap water is safe across the islands, if not always pleasant to the taste, and bottled water costs very little.
Food: the swordfish problem
Most of the standard pregnancy food advice transfers unchanged — avoid unpasteurised cheese, undercooked eggs, pâté and liver, cured meats unless cooked, and anything raw. In the islands that means being careful with the raw-milk goat cheeses, including some of the best of them, which our page on Canarian cheese identifies; being wary of homemade alioli and mayonnaise, which turn up with everything; and treating jamón as off the list unless it has been cooked through.
The genuinely Canarian addition is mercury. Spain's food safety agency, AESAN, advises pregnant women, women trying to conceive, breastfeeding mothers and young children to avoid the highest-mercury predatory fish entirely — swordfish, shark, bluefin tuna and pike. That matters here because swordfish is not an occasional speciality in the Canaries: pez espada or emperador is on practically every seafront menu in the islands, often as the daily fish, and shark appears as cazón or tintorera. It is a wonderful place to eat fish otherwise — the smaller local species listed on our page about Canarian fish and seafood, such as vieja, cherne and sama, are exactly what you want, and the sardines and octopus are fine. Just learn the two or three words to skip.
Stomach upsets are the other everyday risk, and pregnancy makes dehydration harder to shrug off. Standards here are high and the usual culprit is a buffet left too long in the sun — the habits that help are on our page about avoiding food poisoning in the islands.
Excursions to reconsider
Some of the islands' best days out are the ones to skip or modify:
- The Teide cable car. Sustained exposure much above 2,500 metres is generally advised against in pregnancy, and the upper station stands at 3,555 — the detail is on our page about altitude on Teide. The drive through the caldera at around 2,100 metres, without going up, is still a spectacular day.
- Long fast-ferry crossings. The slamming of a fast craft in a swell is unpleasant at the best of times, and several anti-sickness remedies are not recommended in pregnancy — see which crossings are calm and which are not.
- Scuba diving is out; snorkelling in sheltered water is not.
- Hot tubs, saunas and very hot springs — overheating rather than the water itself is the concern, and most hotel spas will ask.
- Steep barranco walks and lava fields. Loose volcanic ground is unforgiving of a changed centre of gravity, and the paths are a long way from a road.
What makes a good pregnant week here
Pick a base with a flat promenade, a lift, shade and food within walking distance, and you have solved most of it. The southern resorts are built exactly that way — the seafront walk from Costa Adeje towards Playa de las Américas is level, shaded in places and lined with places to sit down, and the same is true along Puerto del Carmen and Playa del Inglés. Sea swimming is easy on the sheltered south-coast beaches, and floating in warm salt water is the best thing most third-trimester backs have felt in weeks — check the safety flag first, as our page on reading the beach flags explains, and stay where you can stand up.
Quiet matters more than usual, and this is one case where an adults-only hotel earns its premium — for the afternoon silence rather than anything else. Book a room with air conditioning you control, ask for a low floor, and do not plan three excursions in a week.
Before you book
Three phone calls, in this order: your midwife or GP, to confirm you are fit to travel and to get the letter; your airline, for its exact cut-off on both legs; and your insurer, for the gestation limit and whether a baby born abroad is covered. Apply for the GHIC if you do not have one, pack your maternity notes, and take your own supply of anything you take regularly.
Then go. A short flight to a mild climate with good hospitals and no jabs is about as low-risk as a holiday abroad gets in pregnancy, and the islands do gentle, warm and unhurried better than almost anywhere in Europe.