Add Title to Each Subplot in Matplotlib

In this tutorial, we will look at how to add a different title to each subplot in matplotlib with the help of some examples.

When you’re working with a single plot, you can use the matplot.pyplot object’s title() method to set its title. To set the titles for subplots, however, you have to use the respective subplot’s axes object’s set_title() method. Pass the title as an argument.

The following is the syntax –

# create a plot with two subplots
fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(1, 2)

# add title to subplot1
ax1.set_title("Title of subplot1")

# add title to subplot2
ax2.set_title("Title of subplot2")

Let’s now look at some examples of using the above syntax. First, we will a plot with two subplots without any titles.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# x values - years
x = [2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020]
# y values - 1 USD in INR
y = [46.67, 53.44, 56.57, 62.33, 62.97, 66.46, 67.79, 70.09, 70.39, 76.38]

# create subplots
fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(1, 2, figsize=(10, 5))

# plot the first subplot
ax1.scatter(x, y)
# add axis labels
ax1.set_xlabel('Year')
ax1.set_ylabel('1USD in INR')

# plot the second subplot
ax2.scatter(x, y)
# add axis labels
ax2.set_xlabel('Year')
ax2.set_ylabel('1USD in INR')

Output:

the resulting subplots without titles on each subplot

Example 1 – Add a different title to each subplot

Here, we plotted the same scatter plot in both subplots but that is not important. Let’s see how we can separately set the title for each subplot.

# create subplots
fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(1, 2, figsize=(10, 5))

# plot the first subplot
ax1.scatter(x, y)
# add axis labels
ax1.set_xlabel('Year')
ax1.set_ylabel('1USD in INR')
# add title to subplot
ax1.set_title('USD vs INR YoY')

# plot the second subplot
ax2.scatter(x, y)
# add axis labels
ax2.set_xlabel('Year')
ax2.set_ylabel('1USD in INR')
# add title to subplot
ax2.set_title('USD vs INR in 2010s')

Output:

Each subplot now has its own title.

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Example 2 – Add a title to the entire figure

In case you want to set the title of the entire figure, you can use the fig object’s suptitle() method. Let’s add an overall title to the above grid of subplots.

# create subplots
fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(1, 2, figsize=(10, 5))

# plot the first subplot
ax1.scatter(x, y)
# add axis labels
ax1.set_xlabel('Year')
ax1.set_ylabel('1USD in INR')
# add title to subplot
ax1.set_title('USD vs INR YoY')

# plot the second subplot
ax2.scatter(x, y)
# add axis labels
ax2.set_xlabel('Year')
ax2.set_ylabel('1USD in INR')
# add title to subplot
ax2.set_title('USD vs INR in 2010s')

# add figure title
fig.suptitle("Foregin currency performance against USD", fontsize=18)

Output:

We added a title to the entire figure. Note that we additionally passed the font size we want the title to have with the fontsize parameter.

Author

Piyush Raj

Piyush is a data professional passionate about using data to understand things better and make informed decisions. He has experience working as a Data Scientist in the consulting domain and holds an engineering degree from IIT Roorkee. His hobbies include watching cricket, reading, and working on side projects.

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