How to change the font size on a matplotlib plot

From the matplotlib documentation,

font = {'family' : 'normal',
        'weight' : 'bold',
        'size'   : 22}

matplotlib.rc('font', **font)

This sets the font of all items to the font specified by the kwargs object, font.

Alternatively, you could also use the rcParams update method as suggested in this answer:

matplotlib.rcParams.update({'font.size': 22})

or

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.rcParams.update({'font.size': 22})

You can find a full list of available properties on the Customizing matplotlib page.

If you are a control freak like me, you may want to explicitly set all your font sizes:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

SMALL_SIZE = 8
MEDIUM_SIZE = 10
BIGGER_SIZE = 12

plt.rc('font', size=SMALL_SIZE)          # controls default text sizes
plt.rc('axes', titlesize=SMALL_SIZE)     # fontsize of the axes title
plt.rc('axes', labelsize=MEDIUM_SIZE)    # fontsize of the x and y labels
plt.rc('xtick', labelsize=SMALL_SIZE)    # fontsize of the tick labels
plt.rc('ytick', labelsize=SMALL_SIZE)    # fontsize of the tick labels
plt.rc('legend', fontsize=SMALL_SIZE)    # legend fontsize
plt.rc('figure', titlesize=BIGGER_SIZE)  # fontsize of the figure title

Note that you can also set the sizes calling the rc method on matplotlib:

import matplotlib

SMALL_SIZE = 8
matplotlib.rc('font', size=SMALL_SIZE)
matplotlib.rc('axes', titlesize=SMALL_SIZE)

# and so on ...