Moon phase calendar

How to use it

Use the arrows to move between months. Times are shown in your device’s time zone; for another place’s, choose “a place’s time” and search for it: daylight saving time is taken into account. The hemisphere switch shows the moon as it looks from the south, where it appears upside down.

Below the calendar you’ll find this month’s main phases with their exact times and, for the whole year, the full moons (with supermoons and the blue moon) and the solar and lunar eclipses. If you pick a place, it also tells you whether each eclipse can be seen from there.

The phases of the moon

The moon has no light of its own: the sun lights it up, and depending on where it is in its orbit, we see more or less of its lit side. There are four main phases, each an exact moment:

New moon

The moon is between Earth and the sun and we see none of its lit side. This is when solar eclipses can happen.

First quarter

Half of the disk is lit. It rises around noon and is visible in the afternoon and early evening.

Full moon

Earth is between the sun and the moon, which we see fully lit. It rises at sunset and sets at sunrise. This is when lunar eclipses can happen.

Last quarter

Half lit again, the other half. It rises around midnight and is visible before dawn and in the morning.

From one new moon to the next takes 29.5 days on average, but it varies: in 2026, between 29.28 and 29.74 days, because the moon’s orbit is an ellipse and its speed changes.

Why the moon looks upside down in the Southern Hemisphere

From the Southern Hemisphere you see the moon “upside down” compared with the north: what’s on the right in the United States is on the left in Australia or Argentina. That’s why a waxing moon is lit on the left there and a waning moon on the right. Near the equator, the lit part sits more at the bottom or the top, like a smile.

Supermoons, blue moons and eclipses in 2026

A supermoon is a full moon near perigee, the point of its orbit closest to Earth. There’s no official definition; we use a full moon less than 360,000 km (223,694 miles) from Earth, center to center. By that standard, 2026 has one supermoon: December 23, 2026 (221,700 mi). Other sites use broader definitions and count more supermoons a year.

A blue moon isn’t blue: it’s the second full moon in the same calendar month, which happens every two or three years. In 2026, in New York time, it falls on May 31, 2026.

Eclipses can only happen at new moon (solar) or full moon (lunar), and only when the moon is also crossing the plane of Earth’s orbit. 2026 has 2 solar and 2 lunar eclipses: a annular solar eclipse on February 17, 2026; a total solar eclipse on August 12, 2026 (from New York, partial, with 9% of the sun covered); a total lunar eclipse on March 3, 2026 (partly visible from New York); a partial lunar eclipse on August 28, 2026 (visible from New York).

How it’s calculated and how accurate it is

Phases, illumination, distances and eclipses come from Astronomy Engine, an open-source library. We compared all 50 main phases of 2026 with the U.S. Naval Observatory’s: never more than a minute apart. The four eclipses of 2026 match NASA’s catalogs in type, in the time of greatest eclipse (less than 5 seconds apart) and in the length of each stage (less than two minutes).

Each day’s moon is drawn with how much of it is lit at 12:00 noon that day in the selected time zone.

A printable moon calendar for the whole year

This calendar is for checking month by month. If you want the whole year on one printable page, you’ll find it on TidePlanet, our tide website.

Yearly moon calendar on TidePlanet TidePlanet is made by the same team as Mapsfera.