Solar eclipses to 2040
Every total and annular solar eclipse between 2026 and 2040 — 21 of them, 11 total and 10 annular. Each one has its path traced, its local contact times computed for cities worldwide, and a map of how much of the Sun goes missing where.
The catalogue
| Date | Type | Greatest duration | Path width | Cities in path |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 August 2026 | total | 2 min 21 s | 285 km | 16 |
| 6 February 2027 | annular | 7 min 48 s | 278 km | 24 |
| 2 August 2027 | total | 6 min 27 s | 261 km | 56 |
| 26 January 2028 | annular | 10 min 24 s | 319 km | 30 |
| 22 July 2028 | total | 5 min 15 s | 233 km | 3 |
| 1 June 2030 | annular | 5 min 16 s | 246 km | 66 |
| 25 November 2030 | total | 3 min 48 s | 172 km | 6 |
| 21 May 2031 | annular | 5 min 19 s | 149 km | 30 |
| 14 November 2031 | total | 1 min 14 s | 41 km | 0 |
| 9 May 2032 | annular | 39 s | 34 km | 0 |
| 30 March 2033 | total | 2 min 40 s | 648 km | 0 |
| 20 March 2034 | total | 4 min 14 s | 162 km | 30 |
| 12 September 2034 | annular | 2 min 52 s | 99 km | 5 |
| 9 March 2035 | annular | 1 min 22 s | 28 km | 1 |
| 2 September 2035 | total | 2 min 59 s | 120 km | 20 |
| 13 July 2037 | total | 4 min 4 s | 205 km | 2 |
| 5 January 2038 | annular | 3 min 12 s | 104 km | 25 |
| 2 July 2038 | annular | 1 min 31 s | 28 km | 13 |
| 26 December 2038 | total | 2 min 22 s | 98 km | 0 |
| 21 June 2039 | annular | 4 min 1 s | 353 km | 19 |
| 15 December 2039 | total | 1 min 54 s | 389 km | 0 |
What will you see, and when
- 20 March 2034Total100% covered1 min 39 s of totality
Why there is not one every month
The Moon laps the Earth every 29.5 days, so a new Moon — the Moon between us and the Sun — comes round that often. Almost every time, it misses. The Moon's orbit is tilted about five degrees from the plane the Earth orbits in, so the shadow usually passes above or below us entirely. Only when a new Moon happens near one of the two points where the orbits cross does the shadow land on Earth at all.
Whether you get a total or an annular eclipse comes down to a coincidence with no deeper cause: the Sun is about 400 times wider than the Moon and about 400 times further away, so the two discs appear almost exactly the same size. Almost. The Moon's distance varies by around 13%, and when it is far the disc is too small to cover the Sun, leaving a ring — annular. When it is near, the shadow reaches the ground and the corona comes out.
The shadow is small and the Earth is large, which is why any given place waits centuries between total eclipses while the planet as a whole gets one every 18 months or so.