2026 Total Solar Eclipse: Path, Times & Best Places to Watch

A total solar eclipse crosses Greenland, Iceland and northern Spain on Wednesday 12 August 2026 — the first in Iceland since 1954, the first in Spain since 1905, and the first in mainland Europe for twenty years.

If you are reading this from the United States, start with the disappointing part: no US city sees totality. The whole country gets a partial eclipse at best, and the best is Fairbanks at 37% of the Sun covered. That is not a small version of totality. It is a different event, and one you must watch through filters from beginning to end.

Can you see the 2026 eclipse from the United States?

Only as a partial eclipse, and only from the northern half of the country — NASA puts the range as Alaska to North Carolina, plus most of Canada.

All times local. Fairbanks, Anchorage and Juneau are a.m. (AKDT); every other city is p.m. (EDT). * Portland ME — see the note below.

⚠️ About that Portland, Maine row. NASA’s table gives the partial ending at 2:27 p.m. We think that is a slip, and we checked before saying so. Portland has more coverage than Boston and starts earlier, so its eclipse cannot finish 19 minutes before Boston’s. Recomputing every city in the table from JPL ephemerides reproduces nine of the ten to within a minute — and puts Portland’s end at 2:47 p.m. The listed 2:27 p.m. is also identical to Washington, D.C.’s. If you are in Portland, plan for 2:47.

Everywhere in this table, the Sun is never safe to look at with the naked eye at any point. Totality is the only phase during which filters can come off, and totality does not happen anywhere in the US on this date.

Where does the path of totality actually go?

Totality touches the Arctic, eastern Greenland, western Iceland, northern Spain, two villages in northeastern Portugal and Mallorca — and almost nothing else. The track also does something unusual: it begins over Siberia and runs east to west across the Arctic, just missing the North Pole, before curving south for Greenland, Iceland and Spain.

The path is 294 km (183 miles) wide at its widest. Madrid, Barcelona, Lisbon, London and Paris are all outside it — Madrid and Barcelona reach 99% and still see nothing of the corona. Ninety-nine per cent is not totality; the difference between them is the entire point of travelling.

Iceland or Spain: which is the better bet?

This is the real question, and it is a genuine trade-off rather than a matter of taste.

Iceland has the better geometry and the worse weather. The Sun sits about 25° up — high enough that terrain and low cloud are not fatal — and the western Westfjords get the longest totality on land anywhere, 2 min 13 s at Látrabjarg. Iceland is also, reliably, a cloudy country.

Spain has the better weather and the worse geometry. August at low elevation in northern Spain offers a genuinely good chance of clear sky. But the Sun is only 8 to 12° above the horizon on the north coast, and lower still inland and east — 5.9° at Zaragoza, 4.4° at Valencia, 2.4° at Palma. At those altitudes a ridgeline, a hotel, or one bank of coastal cloud sitting on the horizon is enough to take the whole thing away.

The practical consequence: in Spain, site selection is not about the town, it is about the horizon. You need an unobstructed view low to the west-northwest. In Iceland you mostly need luck with cloud.

Two Icelandic details worth knowing. Reykjavík gets only 1 min 01 s — the capital sits near the edge of the path, and Látrabjarg gets more than twice as long. And Bilbao gets 31 seconds, for the same reason on the Spanish side. Being inside the path is not the same as being well inside it.

What time does it happen?

Greatest eclipse is at 17:47 UTC — 1:47 p.m. Eastern. Iceland sees totality two minutes later; Spain sees it forty minutes after that, at about 18:28 to 18:33 UTC, which is 8:28 to 8:33 in the evening local time.

The whole track takes about ninety minutes, and the Iberian end of it takes about five. That compression is real: near the sunset end of a track the shadow is moving at its fastest across the ground.

It also means the Spanish eclipse happens minutes before sunset. In Bilbao, Vitoria, Logroño, Burgos, Zaragoza and along the Costa Daurada the Sun actually sets while the eclipse is still in its closing partial phase — the published tables give a sunset time instead of an end time for those cities.

How do you watch it safely?

The rule is short and it has one exception.

• Certified eclipse glasses (ISO 12312-2) for every partial phase. Sunglasses are not a substitute, and neither is a phone screen, exposed film, or a welding mask below shade 14.
• Only inside totality can the filters come off — and only for as long as totality lasts, which here is at most 2 min 18 s and in most places nearer one minute.
• In the United States there is no such moment. The eclipse is partial from coast to coast, so the glasses stay on from first contact to last.
• Cameras, binoculars and telescopes need their own filters fitted at the front. Eclipse glasses held behind an optic do not protect you.

If you have no glasses, a pinhole projector made from two pieces of card works, costs nothing, and is completely safe because you never look at the Sun at all.

When is the next total solar eclipse?

Sooner than you would think, and then not for a long time.

The 2027 track runs from Spain across Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Egypt to Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Somalia; the maximum falls near Luxor, and it is the longest totality on easily reached land this century. The 2044 path only clips the US near sunset. 2045 is the coast-to-coast one — the sequel to 2017.

Spain is extraordinarily lucky here: it gets totality on 12 August 2026 and again on 2 August 2027, 355 days later, having waited 121 years before that. Iceland is the opposite case — this is its only total eclipse of the entire 21st century, and the next one is in 2196.

For US readers the honest summary is that 2026 is a trip abroad or nothing, and the next real one at home is 19 years away, on 12 August 2045.

Sources

Checked on 1 August 2026.