Where to watch the 2027 solar eclipses

Two solar eclipses cross inhabited land in 2027. On February 6 the Moon leaves a ring of Sun around its edge, an annular eclipse, along a path from Chile's island of Chiloe across Patagonia to Argentina's Atlantic beaches and Uruguay, ending at sunset on the coast of West Africa. On August 2 it covers the Sun completely, for over six minutes in Sohag, along a path from southern Spain across North Africa and Saudi Arabia to Yemen and Somalia. This page compares 34 places on what decides a trip: how long the ring or totality lasts, how high the Sun stands, how cloudy that month usually is there, and what to watch out for, which is noted under each place.

Durations, clock times and Sun heights are computed for each place's own coordinates by the same engine behind every page on this site. The cloud column is a NASA satellite average for the eclipse month over 2001 to 2025: the share of the daytime sky covered by cloud, on average, over an area roughly 100 kilometers across. Lower is better. It is an average for the month, and the sky on the day can still surprise you. Tap or click a column heading to sort a table; places outside the path stay at the bottom.

August 2, 2027: the total eclipse

The short answer:

• Longest totality here: Sohag, 6 min 22 sec with the Sun 81° up.
• Most reliable sky: Upper Egypt, where August daytime cloud averages 5% at Sohag. Midday heat is the hardship there.
• Longest in Europe here: Tarifa, 4 min 38 sec in the morning with the Sun 38° up in the east.
• Close to the edge: Cadiz (2 min 54 sec) and Malaga (1 min 51 sec). A short trip toward the center of the path buys real time.
• No totality at all: Aswan and Marsa Matruh. Without totality there is no corona, the sky never darkens, and filters never come off.

Every August town links to its own page, with contact times to the second, the distance to the edge of the path and local advice. The 2027 eclipse town list has the full set, and the main page for this eclipse has the global circumstances.

February 6, 2027: the annular eclipse

In an annular eclipse the Moon is too far from Earth to cover the Sun completely, so a bright ring of Sun stays visible around it. At most about 86% of the Sun is covered, so daylight dims only a little, and eye protection is needed for every second of the eclipse. Outside the path the Moon sits off-center and the Sun stays a crescent, even where almost as much of it is covered: Montevideo sees about 86% covered and no ring.

The short answer:

• Longest ring here: Villa Gesell, 7 min 52 sec with the Sun 67° up.
• Argentina's Atlantic beaches: Villa Gesell, Necochea, Mar del Plata and Monte Hermoso all get over 7 minutes, in the middle of the summer holidays.
• The Andes side: Esquel (7 min 32 sec) and Trevelin (7 min 32 sec). El Bolson, farther north, is close to the edge.
• Uruguay: Punta del Este (5 min 32 sec).
• A sunset ring in West Africa: Accra, Lome and Lagos, with the Sun only 1 to 4 degrees above the western horizon. It needs a clear sea horizon and a lull in the harmattan dust haze.
• Clearest and cloudiest: San Antonio Oeste averages 33% daytime cloud in February; Quellon averages 60%.
• No ring at all: Montevideo, Bariloche, Puerto Madryn, Puerto Montt and Buenos Aires see only a partial eclipse.

The main page for this eclipse has the global timeline and a location panel that computes your own contact times.

Checking a spot that is not listed

For a particular hotel, beach or viewpoint, both eclipse pages compute your local contact times, how much of the Sun is covered and how high it stands, for coordinates you give them. The Eclipse Explorer maps both paths, and the Eclipse Control Center gives your distance to the nearest stretch of a path over land. For August 2, Your Eclipse Day prints the whole morning to the second for any place you choose.

Eye safety

Looking at the Sun without protection damages the retina painlessly and permanently. Use eclipse glasses that meet the ISO 12312-2 standard (the gear page explains what to look for), a pinhole projector, or a solar filter fitted to the front of any binoculars or telescope. The annular eclipse needs protection from start to finish. In the total eclipse, it is safe to look with bare eyes only during totality itself, and the glasses go back on when the first bead of sunlight returns.

How these figures are computed

Contact times come from NASA's Besselian elements for each eclipse (Eclipse Predictions by Fred Espenak, NASA's GSFC), with the Earth's measured and predicted rotation (IERS delta-T), at each place's GeoNames coordinates at sea level: the same computation as the public API and the town pages. A duration is the difference between the two printed contact times, and the Sun height is taken at the deepest point of the eclipse. Checked against JPL's DE440 ephemeris, every place on this page gets the same verdict and every duration agrees to within a second; the methodology page covers the conventions. These are smooth-limb figures, and the Moon's mountainous edge moves the real edge of a path, so a place within 5 kilometers of either edge is left off this page. Abidjan, Ivory Coast, is one: it sits right at the edge of the February ring.

The cloud column is the Cloud Amount at Daytime from NASA's POWER project, a monthly climatology for 2001 to 2025 built on CERES satellite cloud data. Each figure covers a grid cell roughly 100 kilometers across, so on a coast it blends land and sea, and it cannot see local effects such as the levante cloud on the Rock of Gibraltar or a morning sea fog. Places close together can share one cell, as Tarifa and Gibraltar do. For finer figures, Jay Anderson's Eclipsophile works from higher-resolution satellite cloud data and is the reference eclipse chasers use. These data were obtained from the NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) POWER Project funded through the NASA Earth Science/Applied Science Program.

The notes under each place are ours. Travel advice changes, so check your own government's current advice before you book.

Frequently asked questions

Where is the best place to see the August 2, 2027 total solar eclipse?

For the longest totality, the Nile valley in Upper Egypt: Sohag gets 6 min 22 sec with the Sun 81 degrees up, and August daytime cloud there averages about 5 percent. In Europe, Tarifa gets 4 min 38 sec in the morning with the Sun 38 degrees up.

Where can I see the annular eclipse of February 6, 2027?

The ring is visible along a path from southern Chiloe in Chile, across Patagonia to Argentina's Atlantic beaches around Mar del Plata, then along Uruguay's coast at Punta del Este. It ends at sunset on the coast of Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria, with the Sun low in the west.

Will Buenos Aires see the ring of fire in February 2027?

No. Buenos Aires sees a partial eclipse, with about 82 percent of the Sun covered and no ring. The nearest places inside the path are the beach towns south along the coast toward Mar del Plata.

Is Aswan in the path of the 2027 total eclipse?

No. Aswan sees about 99 percent of the Sun covered and no totality, so filters stay on throughout. The edge of the path is a short drive north, and the Aswan page gives the distance.

Do I need eclipse glasses for the 2027 eclipses?

Yes. For the annular eclipse of February 6, you need them for every second, because a ring of Sun is always showing. For the total eclipse of August 2, you need them for the partial phases; only during totality itself is it safe to look with bare eyes.

Keep exploring

The eclipse calendar lists every solar and lunar eclipse through 2028, and the town-by-town pages give each August town its own timeline.