Winter Solstice 2026: the shortest day of the year

What the winter solstice is

The winter solstice is the moment the Sun reaches its farthest point south in the sky over the course of the year. Astronomers define it precisely: the instant the Sun's apparent ecliptic longitude reaches 270 degrees. At that moment the Sun stands directly over the Tropic of Capricorn, about 23.4 degrees south of the equator, and the North Pole is tipped as far away from the Sun as it gets.

In 2026 that instant is 21 Dec, 20:50 UTC, which is 3:50 PM EST on Monday, December 21, 2026 where you are. Because it is a single moment in time, the calendar date depends on your time zone: in 2026 it falls on December 21 for the Americas and Europe, but it is already December 22 in Australia and New Zealand.

The word comes from the Latin solstitium, from sol (Sun) and sistere (to stand still). For weeks before the solstice the sunrise point slides south along the horizon every morning; around the solstice it slows, pauses and turns back. You can see this in the Sun path chart above: the December arc is the lowest and shortest of the year, rising in the south-east and setting in the south-west.

Why it is the shortest day

The Earth's axis is tilted by about 23.4 degrees relative to its orbit, and the axis keeps pointing the same way in space (towards Polaris) all year. In December the Northern Hemisphere leans away from the Sun. The Sun climbs only a short way above the southern horizon, its light arrives at a low angle and spreads over a wider area, and it spends less than half of each 24-hour turn above the horizon. That is winter.

In New York the Sun reaches just 25.9° above the horizon at solar noon on the solstice, and you get 9h 15m of daylight. The farther north you live, the bigger the effect: London gets 7h 50m, Reykjavik only 4h 08m, while Miami still enjoys 10h 32m. North of the Arctic Circle the Sun does not rise at all. The table below lists more than 30 cities.

The earliest sunset comes before the solstice

Many people notice that it gets dark earliest in early December, not on the solstice, and that the mornings keep getting darker into January. That is real, and it is not a mistake in the almanac. The length of the solar day changes slightly through the year because Earth's orbit is an ellipse and its axis is tilted, so solar noon by the clock drifts later by about half a minute a day in December. Sunrise and sunset both slide later with it.

In New York the earliest sunset is around December 7 (4:28 PM) and the latest sunrise is around January 4 (7:20 AM). The solstice sits between the two and has the least daylight in total. So the evenings are already getting lighter by the solstice, while the mornings keep getting darker for another two weeks.

How fast the days get longer

Day length changes slowest at the solstices and fastest at the equinoxes. In the first week after the winter solstice the day grows by only seconds. In New York it goes from 9h 15m on the solstice to 9h 45m a month later (a gain of 30 min) and 10h 56m two months later (a gain of 1h 41m). By the spring equinox in March day and night are roughly equal again.

Winter solstice, Earth's orbit and the cold

The winter solstice is not when the Earth is farthest from the Sun. It is close to the opposite: Earth reaches perihelion, its closest point, in early January, about two weeks after the December solstice, at about 147 million km. The distance changes by only about 3% over the year, far too little to cause the seasons; the tilt does that. Because Earth moves fastest near perihelion, the Northern Hemisphere's astronomical winter is the shortest season, under 89 days. See the numbers on the seasons page.

The coldest weather usually comes three to six weeks after the solstice. Land and especially the oceans hold heat from summer and keep giving it up through December, so the temperature keeps falling after the light has turned the corner. Meteorologists count December, January and February as winter for that reason.

How the world marks the winter solstice

The return of the Sun after the longest night is one of the oldest things people have celebrated. Some traditions are tied to the astronomical solstice, others to a nearby calendar date. These are some of the best known, with the history kept separate from modern practice.

Yule

Yule was a midwinter festival of the pre-Christian Germanic peoples. The English monk Bede, writing in 725, recorded that the Anglo-Saxons called the months either side of midwinter Giuli, and in Old Norse sources the feast is jol. After Christianisation the name passed to Christmas: Christmas is still jul in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, and customs such as the Yule log and Yule goat come from this season. Modern Pagans keep Yule at the winter solstice as one of the eight festivals of the Wheel of the Year, the one that follows Samhain.

Dongzhi in China

Dongzhi, "winter arrives", is one of the 24 solar terms of the traditional Chinese calendar, and it begins at the exact moment the Sun reaches 270 degrees, the astronomical solstice. It was a major festival in imperial China, and an old saying holds that Dongzhi is as important as the New Year. Families gather to eat tangyuan (sweet rice balls) in the south and jiaozi dumplings in the north. It is also widely kept in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, and as Dongji in Korea, where people eat red bean porridge.

Shab-e Yalda in Iran

Yalda Night, or Shab-e Chelleh, celebrates the longest night of the year on the eve of the first day of the month of Dey in the Iranian solar calendar, which falls on the winter solstice. Families stay up late together, eat pomegranates, watermelon and nuts, and read the poems of Hafez, often opening the book at random as a kind of fortune telling. In 2022 Yalda and Chelleh were added to UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage, nominated jointly by Iran and Afghanistan.

Toji in Japan

Toji is the Japanese name for the winter solstice, also one of the solar terms. The best-known custom is the yuzu bath (yuzuyu), floating whole yuzu citrus fruits in the bath, said to keep away colds through the winter. People also eat kabocha squash and other foods whose names contain the sound "n", thought to bring luck.

Soyal among the Hopi

Soyal is the Hopi winter solstice ceremony in northern Arizona, held to turn the Sun back towards summer and to welcome the katsinam (spirit beings) who stay with the Hopi through the first half of the year. Much of the ceremony is private and takes place in the kivas; prayer sticks (paho) are made and offered for the coming year. It is a living religious practice, and visitors should respect the Hopi villages' rules on attendance.

Newgrange

Newgrange in County Meath, Ireland, is a passage tomb built around 3200 BC, older than Stonehenge and the Giza pyramids. Above its entrance is a "roof box", a small opening that lets the rising Sun shine down the 19-metre passage onto the floor of the inner chamber for about 17 minutes on the mornings around the winter solstice. The alignment was rediscovered by the archaeologist Michael O'Kelly in 1967. Each year a free lottery decides who stands in the chamber at dawn; the light only shows if the sky is clear. At Stonehenge the main axis lines up with the midwinter sunset in one direction and the midsummer sunrise in the other, and crowds gather at the stones on the winter solstice morning.

Christmas and the solstice

In the Julian calendar of ancient Rome, December 25 was counted as the winter solstice, and a festival of the Unconquered Sun (Sol Invictus) is recorded on that date in the 4th century. Whether the Christmas date was chosen because of it is debated by historians; other early Christian writers worked the date out from a calculation based on March 25. What is not in doubt is that Christmas customs in northern Europe absorbed many older midwinter traditions.

In the Southern Hemisphere it is midsummer

The December solstice is the same moment worldwide, but south of the equator it is the summer solstice and the longest day. In Sydney there are 14h 25m of daylight on the day. The Southern Hemisphere's winter solstice comes in June, on the June solstice, when many Pagans in Australia and New Zealand celebrate Yule, and Matariki, the Maori new year, is celebrated in Aotearoa New Zealand around the same time of year. If you set your city to somewhere in the south, this page switches its numbers to match.

When does astronomical winter start, and end?

Astronomical winter in the Northern Hemisphere runs from the December solstice to the March equinox. Meteorological winter runs from December 1 to the end of February. Both are in use: forecasters and climate records use the meteorological version, while most calendars, and most people in the US, call the solstice the first day of winter. The seasons page compares the two and lists every equinox and solstice to 2030.