How long does golden hour last? Every place, every month

How we worked it out

Golden hour has no official definition: the bodies that publish sunrise and twilight times define only sunrise, sunset and the three twilights.² We use one stated band, the one set out by the authors of the PhotoPills app: golden light while the sun is between 6° above and 4° below the horizon, and blue hour while it is between 4° and 6° below.³

For each weather station our country and prefecture pages use, we calculated the sun's height every 30 seconds on the 15th of each month of 2026 with the NOAA Solar Calculator equations, and timed each band.¹ We checked the method against the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan's published tables.⁴ We give lengths, not clock times, which depend on time-zone rules.

Evening golden light in Europe, minutes, north to south

Evening golden light in Japan, minutes, north to south

How long is blue hour?

Blue hour, on the same convention, runs from 4° to 6° below the horizon, so it is much shorter.³

Evening figures. The morning is a near mirror image of the evening at the same place and date. A dash means the band has no evening start or end that day: in midwinter at Reykjavik the sun never climbs 6° above the horizon, so on this definition the whole short day is golden light; in midsummer there the sun never sinks far enough below the horizon for the band to end. Times are for the weather station's position; a few kilometres away the light is the same, but hills and buildings can hide the sun earlier.

What these figures cannot tell you

• Whether the light will be golden. Cloud, haze and dust decide that; these are the sun's geometry only.
• Clock times. For a date and place, use the light calendar, which can add the windows to your own calendar.
• Other definitions. Some guides call golden hour roughly the hour after sunrise and before sunset; see why golden hour is not an hour.