Map of the 12 August 2026 solar eclipse in Iceland
Iceland at night, as the Moon’s shadow will see it. Tap anywhere and we tell you what the nearest of our 159 localities will see: whether the eclipse is total or partial, when maximum arrives and how long totality lasts. Press “See the Moon’s shadow” to watch the umbra sweep down western Iceland — the Westfjords first, then Snæfellsnes and the Reykjavík area — between about 17:44 and 17:52 Iceland time (UTC+0), search any town with the magnifier, or switch on the 20 best places layer, led by Hellissandur at the tip of Snæfellsnes.
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How to read the map
Path of totality
The golden band is where the Moon will cover the Sun completely and night will fall in the late afternoon. It takes in the Westfjords, Snæfellsnes, Reykjavík and Reykjanes; the animated dotted line is the centre of the path — the closer to it, the longer totality lasts (up to 2 min 10 s at the western tip of Snæfellsnes).
Obscuration isolines
Outside the band the eclipse is partial. Each line joins the points with the same maximum percentage of Sun covered by the Moon (99%, 98%, 97% and 96%): even in the localities furthest from the path, in the east, the Moon covers at least around 95% of the Sun.
The Moon’s shadow (umbra)
The dark, soft-edged blot is the umbra: the shadow the Moon casts on Earth, trailed by its wake. On 12 August it sweeps down western Iceland from north to south in about eight minutes (~17:44–17:52 UTC); inside it the eclipse is total. When you play it, the map enters cinema mode (×1 or ×2 speed).
Best places (top 20)
Switch the layer on in “Map layers” and the 20 settlements with the most seconds of totality appear as golden stars — Hellissandur, Rif, Hellnar, Ólafsvík, Patreksfjörður… the same dataset-ranked places discussed in where to watch in Iceland.
What about the north and east?
Akureyri, Egilsstaðir, Höfn and the rest of northern and eastern Iceland sit outside the path: there the eclipse will be a very deep partial. Tap the map there too and get each locality’s percentage and the local time of maximum.
Where this data comes from
The path of totality, the isolines and the umbra animation are computed on our own grid over Iceland with the JPL DE440s ephemerides (NASA) using the skyfield astronomy library — the same pipeline as our Spanish map. The 159 localities (every named settlement plus each municipality, sveitarfélag) use the same per-point computation; the “best places” layer ranks those settlements by seconds of totality, exactly like our where-to-watch guide. For the official Icelandic project on the eclipse, see eclipse2026.is. The stretch of the path visible when you zoom far out (or in the intro) is an approximate illustrative trace — labelled as such on the map itself —; the fine computation covers Iceland. The base map is OpenFreeMap with cartography © OpenStreetMap contributors, re-tinted to our night palette. All times are Icelandic local time (UTC+0 all year — no daylight saving).