Shortest day of 2026: daylight hours by city
The shortest day is the day of the winter solstice, when the Sun stands lowest at noon. The winter solstice is on December 21, 2026 at 3:50 p.m. Eastern time (20:50 UTC), so December 21 is the shortest day of the year across the United States: 9 h 15 min of daylight in New York, 10 h 32 min in Miami and 3 h 41 min in Fairbanks, Alaska. Below: sunrise, sunset and daylight for 14 cities, daylight by latitude, and a calculator for any place and date.
December 21, 2026, city by city
Sunrise and sunset by each city's own clock, and how long the Sun is up. Further north the day is shorter: Fairbanks and Reykjavík get less than half of New York's daylight.
| City | Sunrise, a.m. | Sunset, p.m. | Daylight, h:mm |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York | 7:17 | 4:32 | 9:15 |
| Chicago | 7:15 | 4:23 | 9:08 |
| Miami | 7:03 | 5:35 | 10:32 |
| Houston | 7:13 | 5:27 | 10:14 |
| Denver | 7:18 | 4:39 | 9:21 |
| Seattle | 7:55 | 4:20 | 8:26 |
| Los Angeles | 6:55 | 4:48 | 9:53 |
| Anchorage | 10:14 | 3:41 | 5:27 |
| Fairbanks | 10:59 | 2:40 | 3:41 |
| Honolulu | 7:05 | 5:55 | 10:50 |
| Toronto | 7:48 | 4:44 | 8:56 |
| London, UK | 8:04 | 3:53 | 7:50 |
| Reykjavík | 11:22 | 3:29 | 4:07 |
| Sydney | 5:41 | 8:05 | 14:25 |
Shortest and longest day by latitude
Hours of daylight on the winter solstice of 2026 and the summer solstice of 2027. North of about 67° the Sun does not rise at all in late December, and does not set in late June.
| Latitude | Dec 21, 2026 | Jun 21, 2027 |
|---|---|---|
| 25° N | 10 h 35 min | 13 h 42 min |
| 30° N | 10 h 13 min | 14 h 05 min |
| 35° N | 9 h 48 min | 14 h 31 min |
| 40° N | 9 h 20 min | 15 h 01 min |
| 45° N | 8 h 46 min | 15 h 37 min |
| 50° N | 8 h 04 min | 16 h 22 min |
| 55° N | 7 h 10 min | 17 h 23 min |
| 60° N | 5 h 52 min | 18 h 52 min |
| 65° N | 3 h 35 min | 22 h 02 min |
| 70° N | 0 h | 24 h |
The earliest sunset comes before the solstice
At 40° north the earliest sunset comes around December 7 (4:35 p.m.) and the latest sunrise around January 4 (7:22 a.m.), by the clock on the time zone's meridian. The shortest day sits between the two, because solar noon drifts later through December. South of the equator it is the longest day: in Sydney, Australia, the solstice falls on December 22, local time, with 14 h 25 min of daylight. In 2027 the winter solstice is December 21 at 9:42 p.m. Eastern time, and the longest day is June 21, 2027 (solstice at 10:11 a.m. Eastern daylight time).
Daylight for any place and date
Enter your latitude and longitude (west is negative). It starts at today in this device's time zone.
of daylight,
Without JavaScript, the example above is New York on December 21, 2026. Sunrise and sunset are when the top of the Sun touches a flat horizon, the US Naval Observatory's rule; hills and buildings are not counted.
Where Angel Step fits
Angel Step reads only your step count from Apple Health and shows it as one number on a living sky. It does not track daylight; that is this page's job. On the shortest day, a walk at noon catches most of the light there is.
Sources
- US Naval Observatory — Earth's seasons: solstices and equinoxes 2026 and 2027 (UTC). USNO
- US Naval Observatory — one-day sun data, used to check every city's sunrise and sunset on this page. USNO
- Wikipedia — coordinates of each city; IANA time zone database — local clock times. IANA
Updated