Eclipse Calendar 2026

The eclipse calendar 2026 holds 4 eclipses: 2 of the Sun and 2 of the Moon, arriving in 2 eclipse seasons.

That is the ordinary count. Four is what most years get, and the eclipses of 2026 follow the usual pattern — one solar and one lunar eclipse in each of the two seasons.

The deepest alignment of the year is on March 3, with the Sun 3.98° from a lunar node at 12.9° Virgo. That number is the one that decides how central the eclipse is — the smaller it gets, the more squarely the shadow crosses.

Eclipses in 2026 land in Aquarius, Virgo, Leo, Pisces. Because they can only happen near the nodal axis, and the axis moves slowly, a year's eclipses cluster into a small set of opposite signs rather than scattering round the zodiac.

February 17 — an annular solar eclipse at 28.8° Aquarius. The Moon is far enough from Earth to look slightly too small, so a ring of sunlight is left around it. There is no moment when it is safe to look without a filter.

March 3 — a total lunar eclipse at 12.9° Virgo. The Moon passes fully into the Earth's shadow and usually turns deep red. Visible from the entire night side of the planet and safe to watch with the naked eye.

August 12 — a total solar eclipse at 20.0° Leo. The Moon covers the Sun completely, but only along a band roughly a hundred kilometres wide; everywhere else on the daylit side sees a partial phase.

August 28 — a partial lunar eclipse at 4.9° Pisces. Part of the Moon enters the dark shadow, giving it a visible bite for an hour or two.

The eclipses of 2026 do not spread themselves through the year. They arrive in seasons about a month long, when the Sun passes close enough to a lunar node for an alignment to be possible, and within a season a solar and a lunar eclipse fall roughly a fortnight apart.

The eclipses of 2026 fall into the usual two seasons.

Eclipses in 2026 do not all fall on the same pair of opposite signs. That is the nodal axis shifting: the nodes drift backwards through the zodiac by about 19° a year, so roughly every eighteen months the eclipse seasons move into a new pair of signs.

A year that catches the handover shows eclipses in more signs than usual — the earlier ones on the old axis, the later ones on the new. This is the shift astrology pays the most attention to, since it changes which part of a chart the next year and a half of eclipses will touch.

A total solar eclipse, where the Moon covers the Sun completely — visible only from a narrow band, and only for minutes.

An annular solar eclipse, where the Moon is too far from Earth to cover the Sun and leaves a ring of light. Never safe to view without a filter, at any point.

A total lunar eclipse, where the Moon passes fully into the Earth's shadow and usually turns deep red. Visible from the whole night side of the planet and completely safe to watch.

The signs the eclipses of 2026 fall in are not chosen and they are not symbolic in origin. An eclipse can only occur when the Sun is close to one of the two points where the Moon's orbit crosses the plane of the Earth's — the lunar nodes — and those two points sit opposite each other in the zodiac.

So the eclipse degrees of any year are pinned to wherever the nodal axis happens to be. The nodes drift backwards about 19° a year, which is slow enough that a single axis governs eclipses for roughly eighteen months and fast enough that no two consecutive years look quite alike.

That is why the eclipse calendar 2026 shows a small cluster of signs rather than a spread. It is also why comparing one year against the next tells you more than looking at either alone, and why the neighbouring years are linked at the bottom of this page.

There are two honest ways to use a page like this, and one dishonest one.

The first is observational. Find the eclipses of 2026 visible from where you are, note the local time, and for a solar eclipse arrange proper filters well in advance. A lunar eclipse needs nothing but a clear sky and the patience to watch for an hour.

The second is astrological, and it depends on the degree column rather than on the date. Compare the degrees above against your own chart; the ones that touch something are the ones worth attention. Nothing about the year's eclipses is personal until that comparison is made.

The dishonest use is treating a date as a forecast. An eclipse does not schedule events and no reading can tell you what will happen to you on a given day. What the tradition offers is a way of timing your own attention, which is a much smaller claim and the only one made here.

The first eclipse of the year falls on February 17 and the last on August 28, leaving a stretch of 162 days between the end of one season and the start of the next when no alignment is possible at all.

That quiet stretch is not a lull in activity so much as a consequence of geometry: the Sun has moved away from both nodes and cannot come near either until it has travelled far enough round the ecliptic. The interval between eclipse seasons averages about 173 days, which is why the seasons of 2026 sit roughly three weeks earlier than the year before rather than on the same dates.

Within a season the spacing is much tighter. A solar and a lunar eclipse fall about a fortnight apart because they need the same node from opposite ends: the Sun near it for one, the Sun near it and the Moon opposite for the other. Half a lunar month separates the two conditions.

Of the 4 eclipses this year, the one on March 3 at 12.9° Virgo comes nearest to a node, at 3.98°. It is a Lunar · Total, and 100% of the disc is covered at greatest eclipse.

Node gap is worth understanding because it is the one figure that ranks the eclipses of 2026 — or any year — honestly. Depth of shadow, width of the visible band and duration all follow from how squarely the shadow axis meets the Earth, and that is what this number measures. Everything past about fifteen degrees produces no eclipse at all.

What it does not measure is whether you will see anything. A deep eclipse over open ocean is invisible to almost everyone, and a modest partial one over a populated continent is watched by millions. Depth and visibility are separate questions, and only the first is a property of the eclipse itself.

Every degree in this eclipse calendar 2026 is the same for everyone. What differs is whether any of them sit close to something in your own chart — a planet, an angle, the opposite point, or a square.

With the eclipses of 2026 concentrated in Aquarius, Virgo, Leo, Pisces, the placements most directly involved are the ones in those signs and the ones opposite them. If you have nothing there, this year's eclipses are astronomy rather than astrology as far as you are concerned.