Solar eclipse tracker: What time will it hit your location on August 12? 

On August 12, 2026, starting at 15:34 GMT, the moon’s shadow will race from the Arctic across Greenland, Iceland and Spain, blotting out the sun for as long as two minutes and 18 seconds.

Wednesday’s eclipse will be mainland Europe’s first total solar eclipse since 1999, with about 15 million people, mostly in Spain, living in the path of totality.

A partial eclipse will be visible across much of Western Europe, parts of Northwestern Africa, and a small portion of the United States. Overall, about 980 million people, nearly one in eight worldwide, can see the sun at least partly covered.

What happens during an eclipse?

An eclipse happens when one celestial body moves into the shadow of another.

In a lunar eclipse, Earth’s shadow falls across the moon. In a solar eclipse, the moon passes between Earth and the sun and blocks its light, in one of four ways: partial, annular, total or hybrid.

• Partial – The moon clips the sun’s edge, covering only part of it.
• Total – The moon covers the sun completely, turning day to dusk and revealing the corona, the sun’s faint outer atmosphere.
• Annular – The moon is too far from Earth to cover the sun fully, leaving a bright ring of light.
• Hybrid – The rarest kind, shifting between total and annular along its own path.

The sun is about 400 times wider than the moon and sits about 400 times further away, so the two discs appear almost the same size from Earth. This is what makes total eclipses possible.

How often do solar eclipses occur?

According to NASA, two to five solar eclipses are observed on Earth each year. That count covers all four types: partial, annular, total and hybrid.

Total solar eclipses are much less frequent and occur an average of 66 times in a century or roughly once every year and a half.

Of all solar eclipses, roughly a third are partial, a third annular, a bit over a quarter total, and about 5 percent hybrid.

Which countries will see a total solar eclipse?

On August 12, some 15 million people in Spain, Iceland and parts of Greenland, Russia and Portugal will be inside the path of totality, where the sun is blocked completely.

In northern and eastern Spain, which will get prime viewing opportunities, the cities of Leon, Valladolid, Zaragoza, Teruel and Valencia are all located inside the path of totality. Totality will begin at roughly 18:27 GMT in western Spain (8:27pm local time) and last for up to 110 seconds, depending on the exact location. The populous cities of Madrid and Barcelona fall just outside this band, but observers there will still experience more than 99 percent solar coverage.

Which countries will see a partial eclipse?

A partial eclipse will be visible far more widely. Most of Europe gets a deep partial eclipse in the evening, with the sun setting while still partly covered in many places.

In Paris, roughly 92 percent of the sun will be covered, in London 91 percent and in Berlin 85 percent.

For most European cities further east, the sun sets before the eclipse reaches its maximum, meaning the deepest part of the eclipse never appears in the sky. North Africa faces the same cut-off. Algiers will see about 98 percent of the sun covered and Casablanca about 87 percent, in both cases with the sun setting before the eclipse ends.

Across the Atlantic, there is no sunset problem, because the eclipse falls in the morning and afternoon, but North America sits far from the path and gets only a modest bite out of the sun. In Canada, the northeastern city of St John’s will see about 53 percent coverage, dropping to 18 percent in Montreal and 8 percent in Toronto.

In the US, parts of Alaska will see the deepest eclipse in the country at about 37 percent, while the rest of the country gets only a shallow bite, from about 28 percent in northeastern Maine down to 10 percent in New York and almost nothing in the Midwest.

When is the next solar eclipse in your country?

The next total solar eclipse will be on August 2, 2027, crossing southern Spain, North Africa and Yemen.

Use the widget above to see when the next eclipse will be in your city.