Total solar eclipse of 2 August 2027: where, when and how long

On Monday 2 August 2027, the Moon will completely cover the Sun along a narrow path across southern Spain, Gibraltar and North Africa to the Middle East. Inside that path, called the path of totality, the sky goes dark for a few minutes. In central Egypt the Sun stays hidden for up to 6 minutes and 23 seconds, according to NASA. That is very long for a total eclipse.

Outside the path, people in parts of Europe, Africa, the Middle East and western and southern Asia see a partial eclipse, with only part of the Sun covered. The contiguous United States barely sees it: in New York and Boston the eclipse is over before sunrise, and only eastern and northern Maine catch the very end at sunrise.

We calculated predicted times for 30 places ourselves from NASA's data, and checked our numbers against NASA and against JPL Horizons. (2027 also has an annular eclipse on 6 February; NASA lists Chile, Argentina and the Atlantic for its annular phase. This page is about the total eclipse in August.)

Where is the 2027 total solar eclipse visible?

The Moon's shadow first touches Earth over the Atlantic Ocean at sunrise. It races east through the Strait of Gibraltar, along the North African coast, across Egypt and the Red Sea, over Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and leaves Earth over the Indian Ocean.

We placed NASA's coordinates for the edges of the path on a world map with Natural Earth's country borders. From west to east, the path of totality crosses Morocco, southern Spain and Gibraltar, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, a small strip of north-eastern Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and northern Somalia. NASA's own one-line summary does not name Tunisia, but its path coordinates do cross southern Tunisia: Sfax is inside the path.

The green band on our map is where the eclipse is total. In the blue areas you see a partial eclipse: the Moon takes a bite out of the Sun, but the sky does not go dark. The percentages are the share of the Sun's disc covered at maximum. Some big cities sit just outside the path: Seville, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, Cairo and Aswan all get a deep partial eclipse, but no totality.

How long is totality? Times for each city

Totality is the short time when the Moon covers the Sun completely. How long it lasts depends on where you stand. It is longest on the central line, the middle of the path, and drops to zero at the edges.

Sun height is measured from the horizon (0°) to straight overhead (90°). These are predictions for the city centre. Moving a few kilometres towards the central line can add a lot of time, especially in Málaga, Cádiz and Sana'a, which sit near the edge of the path. Other calculators can differ by a few seconds. The totality lengths were calculated before the start and end times were rounded to the second, so they can differ by one second from the difference between the two times. Never use a clock to decide when to take off your eclipse glasses: wait until the Sun is completely covered.

What you will see during totality

Before totality, the Sun slowly turns into a thinner and thinner crescent for more than an hour, and the daylight gets dim and strange. In the last seconds the sky darkens quickly. Then the Moon covers the Sun completely, and the Sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, appears as a pale glow around the black Moon.

During totality the sky is dark enough to see the brightest planets. On 2 August 2027 Venus is only about 3° from the Sun, at magnitude −3.9: very bright and very close to the eclipsed Sun. Mercury is about 10° away and Jupiter about 22° away. (Magnitude measures brightness: the lower the number, the brighter.) We took these positions from NASA's JPL Horizons. To preview the sky for your own spot, you can set the date and place in a free planetarium such as Stellarium Web.

Why Egypt gets more than six minutes

How long totality lasts depends on three things: how much bigger the Moon looks than the Sun, where you stand inside the path, and how fast the Moon's shadow sweeps over you.

On this date the Moon looks almost 8 percent wider than the Sun (NASA gives a size ratio of 1.079), so it covers the Sun with room to spare. In Egypt, near the point of greatest eclipse, the Sun is almost straight overhead (82° at Luxor). There the shadow moves over the ground more slowly than near the ends of the path, where it skims across Earth at a low angle. Our chart of NASA's central-line data shows the result: about 3 minutes where the shadow first touches the Atlantic at sunrise, rising to 6 minutes 23 seconds in Egypt, and falling again towards the Indian Ocean.

Sohag lies almost on the central line and gets 6 minutes 22 seconds in our calculation.

This eclipse belongs to Saros 136, a family of eclipses that repeats about every 18 years, 11 days and 8 hours. According to NASA's Saros catalogue, these members had progressively shorter maximum totality: 7 min 08 s in 1955, 6 min 53 s in 1991, 6 min 39 s in 2009 and 6 min 23 s in 2027.

Partial eclipse outside the path: Europe and the Middle East

In a wide area outside the path, people see a partial eclipse. How much of the Sun is covered depends on how close you are to the path.

• Southern Europe: Lisbon about 93 percent, Madrid 86 percent, Athens 78 percent, Rome 75 percent.
• Northern Europe: Paris about 51 percent, London 42 percent, Amsterdam 38 percent.
• Middle East and Africa: Cairo about 95 percent, Dubai 53 percent, Nairobi 31 percent.

Even 99 percent is not totality. The remaining sliver of Sun is so bright that the sky stays light, and you need eclipse glasses the whole time.

North America: in New York and Boston the Sun is still below the horizon when the eclipse ends. At the far eastern tip of Maine (Lubec) the Sun rises about 4 minutes before the end, with only about 2 percent of it covered. Atlantic Canada sees a little more: in Halifax the Sun rises with about 14 percent covered, and in St. John's, Newfoundland, about 29 percent is covered at 6:10 a.m. local time, with the Sun only 4° above the horizon.

The four moments of the eclipse

Astronomers name the four key moments "contacts". Using Luxor as an example (local time, EEST):

1. First contact, 11:40 a.m.: the Moon starts to cover the edge of the Sun. The partial eclipse begins. 2. Second contact, 1:02:03 p.m.: the last bit of sunlight disappears, often as a single bright point: the "diamond ring". Totality begins. 3. Third contact, 1:08:23 p.m.: sunlight returns on the other side, with another diamond ring. Totality ends. 4. Fourth contact, 2:27 p.m.: the Moon leaves the Sun. The eclipse is over.

The diamond ring is still direct sunlight, so keep your eclipse glasses on until the bright Sun is completely covered, and put them back on as soon as it reappears. In Luxor the whole event lasts almost three hours, but totality is only a little over six minutes of it.

How to watch the eclipse safely

Looking at the Sun without proper protection can damage your eyes. The American Astronomical Society (AAS) gives clear rules:

• During the partial phases, look only through eclipse glasses or a handheld solar viewer that meets the ISO 12312-2 international standard.
• Ordinary sunglasses, even very dark ones, are not safe.
• Inspect your viewer before use. If it is scratched, torn or damaged, throw it away.
• Never look through a camera, binoculars or a telescope without a proper solar filter attached securely to the front. Do not use them with eclipse glasses behind them: the concentrated sunlight can damage the filter and your eyes.
• A pinhole projector is a safe alternative: you look at the projected image, never through the pinhole.
• Only during totality, inside the path, you may take your glasses off while the Moon completely covers the Sun's bright face. As soon as the bright Sun begins to reappear, put them back on.

Outside the path there is no totality, so keep your eclipse glasses on the whole time.

Eclipse times for 30 places

Predicted local times for the start, maximum and end of the eclipse. "Total" gives the length of totality; "Partial" gives the share of the Sun covered at maximum. Times are rounded to the nearest minute.

New York is not in the table: the eclipse there happens before sunrise. For all places in the table the Sun is above the horizon for the whole eclipse, which lasts from about 1 hour 55 minutes (Amsterdam) to 2 hours 47 minutes (Aswan).

Total solar eclipse 2027 FAQ

When is the total solar eclipse in 2027? On Monday 2 August 2027. Greatest eclipse is at 10:06:38 UT, when it is just after 1 p.m. in Egypt.

Where does totality last longest? In central Egypt, near the central line around Sohag and Luxor: more than six minutes, with the Sun high in the sky. In southern Spain, Gibraltar and northern Morocco totality is shorter, from under two minutes in Málaga to almost five minutes in Tangier.

How long will the 2027 eclipse last? Up to 6 minutes 23 seconds of totality in Egypt. The whole event, from first to last contact, takes about 1 hour 55 minutes to 2 hours 47 minutes at the places in our table.

Can you see the 2027 eclipse from the United States? Barely. We checked the whole contiguous United States on a grid of points: only in eastern and northern Maine does the Sun rise before the eclipse ends, with just a small part of the Sun still covered (about 2 percent in Lubec). In New York and Boston it is over before sunrise. We did not check Alaska and Hawaii.

Will the whole world go dark on 2 August 2027? No. Only the narrow path of totality, about 205 to 259 km wide, goes dark for a few minutes. Around it, in parts of Europe, Africa and Asia, people see a partial eclipse; most of the rest of the world sees nothing. The photo from the International Space Station, taken during a different eclipse (the annular eclipse of October 2023), shows how small the Moon's shadow on Earth is.

What will I see from London or Amsterdam? A partial eclipse in the late morning: about 42 percent of the Sun covered in London at 10:00 a.m. BST, and 38 percent in Amsterdam at 11:05 a.m. CEST. You need eclipse glasses to look at it.

Is there another eclipse in 2027? Yes: an annular eclipse on 6 February 2027, seen as a ring of Sun in parts of Chile and Argentina. "Annular" means the Moon looks slightly smaller than the Sun, so a bright ring of Sun stays visible.

Is the 2027 eclipse the "eclipse of the century"? Some media call it that because of its long totality. NASA's pages we used do not use that name; they give up to 6 minutes 23 seconds of totality.

What are the next five solar eclipses? From NASA's list: an annular eclipse on 6 February 2027 (Chile, Argentina, Atlantic), this total eclipse on 2 August 2027, an annular eclipse on 26 January 2028 (Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Suriname, Spain, Portugal), a total eclipse on 22 July 2028 (Australia, New Zealand) and a partial eclipse on 14 January 2029 (North and Central America).

When is the next total solar eclipse after 2027? On 22 July 2028, over Australia and New Zealand. For what is in the sky on other nights, see our Tonight page.

How we checked

All eclipse data come from the NASA eclipse website by Fred Espenak: the Besselian elements (the numbers that describe where the Moon's shadow falls), the path table, the list of eclipses for 2021 to 2030 and the Saros catalogue. We wrote our own calculation of the local circumstances from the Besselian elements, using the standard method from the Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac. It uses NASA's value of 71.7 seconds for ΔT, the difference between the clock used for the predictions and ordinary Universal Time.

To check it against NASA's own numbers, we ran it for all 101 points on NASA's central line: our totality lengths matched within 0.2 seconds and the Sun's height within 0.6°. As a separate check, we used NASA JPL Horizons to compute the positions of the Sun and the Moon every second over Luxor. Totality came out at 384 seconds there, against 380.2 seconds in our calculation, a difference of 3.8 seconds. We have not isolated the reason for that difference.

Our values are for city centres at sea level with a smooth Moon edge, so contact times can be off by a few seconds. Local times use the time zones in force in August: CEST (UTC+2) in Spain and Gibraltar, UTC+1 in Morocco, CET (UTC+1) in Algeria and Tunisia, EET (UTC+2) in Libya, EEST (UTC+3) in Egypt, and UTC+3 in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. For North America we counted the Sun as risen when its centre is 0.83° below the horizon, which allows for the bending of light by the air, and checked every 10 seconds whether the eclipse was still going on at sunrise (local daylight time: EDT, ADT, and UTC−2.5 in Newfoundland). For the contiguous United States we repeated the sunrise check on a grid of 13,303 points every 0.25° inside Natural Earth's US border; only points in eastern and northern Maine see the Sun rise before the eclipse ends. Planet positions during totality come from JPL Horizons. The countries in the path come from NASA's path coordinates and Natural Earth's borders.

The map, charts and drawings are ours. The photos are by NASA. Safety advice follows the American Astronomical Society. None of the images is AI-generated. We will add a dated note if NASA updates its predictions.