The solar eclipse of 12 August 2026 in Ireland
On the evening of Wednesday, 12 August 2026, the Moon will take an enormous bite out of the Irish sunset. Not a total eclipse — the path of totality passes well to the north-west, over Iceland, before turning south for Spain — but a genuinely deep one, right across the country: from 93.7% of the Sun covered on the Louth coast to 97.1% in Tralee, Co. Kerry. The catch is the hour: maximum falls between 19:07 and 19:13 Irish time, with the Sun only 14.4–16.6° above the horizon. Everything about watching this eclipse in Ireland comes down to finding a clear view west.
A note on what you are reading, because this site covers several countries: this section is the eclipse as seen from the Republic of Ireland. Northern Ireland is in the United Kingdom section, the eclipse is total in the Iceland section, and the rest of our English coverage is about Spain, where the path of totality actually lands. Every figure below is computed for Irish coordinates and Irish Standard Time.
See how deep it goes in your town →
Ireland eclipse summary
- Deepest in Ireland
- 97.1% in Tralee and Killarney, Co. Kerry
- In Dublin
- 94.0% maximum at 19:10, Sun 14.7° high
- Sun’s altitude at maximum
- 14.4–16.6° nationwide — low in the west-north-west, everywhere
- Places with totality
- 0 of the 54 towns and cities we track (2,673,100 people)
Circumstances computed for the coordinates of each Irish locality with JPL DE440s ephemerides — the same pipeline behind every other country on this site. All times are Irish Standard Time (IST, UTC+1), exactly as they appear on an Irish clock. No point in the Republic lies inside the path of totality: every figure on these pages is for a partial eclipse.
What Ireland actually gets
The eclipse starts over the whole country within six minutes of itself — first contact between 18:09 and 18:15 — and ends by 20:08, before sunset everywhere in the dataset: nowhere in the Republic does the Sun set while still eclipsed. In between, the Moon slides across the solar disc for roughly an hour, reaches maximum, and slides off again.
The depth varies far less than people expect, and in a very orderly way: the closer to the south-west, the more of the Sun disappears. Tralee and the rest of Kerry top the list at 97.1%; Cork, Limerick, Clare and Galway sit in the 96s; the midlands and the south-east are in the 94s and 95s; and the thinnest slice of all — 93.7% — belongs to Dundalk and the north-east coast. Between the best and worst spot in the country there is barely three and a half percentage points, so nobody needs to drive across Ireland for this: what matters far more is your horizon and the cloud.
Be clear about what 97.1% looks like, though. Above about 94% the light itself changes — a flat, cold, metallic dusk, sharp shadows, a real drop in temperature — and it is genuinely strange to stand in. It is still not night, no corona appears, no stars come out, and the eclipse glasses never come off. The difference between 97% and 100% is not three percent of an experience; it is a different experience.
The Ireland guides
Everything you need to decide where to stand, written for this country, with every figure computed from the Irish dataset — plus the neighbouring section, for anyone who came here looking for Belfast:
Where the eclipse goes deepest
All 54 towns and cities ranked by percentage of Sun covered, each with its county, the local time of maximum, how high the Sun will be and what you will honestly notice.
The map of Irish obscuration
Our own plot of the dataset: one dot per town, shaded by how much of the Sun the Moon covers, so you can see the south-west-to-north-east gradient at a glance.
The complete Ireland guide
Eye safety, the eclipse-day timeline on Dublin’s clock, how to beat a Sun that never gets above 17°, and the honest case for chasing totality abroad.
Certified eclipse glasses
How to check an EN ISO 12312-2 pair in two minutes, what never to use, and why in Ireland the glasses never come off.
Northern Ireland and Britain
A separate country, a separate dataset, a slightly shallower eclipse: 89.6–96.4% of the Sun covered across 220 British and Northern Irish towns and cities, Belfast included at 93.1%.
The 5 cities
Start here if you just want your own city’s times — every one of them gets at least 94.0% of the Sun covered:
Where the real totality is
No part of Ireland — north or south, mainland or island — is inside the path. If you want to see the corona rather than a very odd evening, you are getting on a plane, and there are two honest destinations that same day:
- Reykjavík, Iceland — the only capital city in the path: 1m 02s of totality with the Sun 24.5° up, about 1,494 km from Dublin in a straight line, and it happens in the afternoon rather than at dusk. Longer totalities lie a couple of hours up the west coast: see our Iceland section.
- Cariño (A Coruña), Spain — where the path makes landfall on the Galician–Asturian coast: 1m 47s of totality, roughly 1,075 km from Dublin. Deeper into the band, Navia (Asturias) reaches 1m 53s, the longest in our Spanish dataset — though there the Sun is nearly setting, which is its own gamble. The 50 best places in Spain →
Distances are straight-line, computed from Dublin’s coordinates to each locality’s own — not flight or driving distances.
Every town and city we track
All 54 localities, deepest first. Times are Irish Standard Time (IST, UTC+1); some settlements straddle two counties and are labelled as the dataset labels them.
| # | Town or city | County | Sun covered | Maximum | Sun altitude |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tralee | Kerry | 97.1% | 19:12 | 16.4° |
| 2 | Killarney | Kerry | 97.1% | 19:13 | 16.2° |
| 3 | Cork | Cork | 96.5% | 19:13 | 15.5° |
| 4 | Carrigaline | Cork | 96.5% | 19:13 | 15.4° |
| 5 | Mallow | Cork | 96.4% | 19:12 | 15.7° |
| 6 | Cobh | Cork | 96.4% | 19:13 | 15.4° |
| 7 | Midleton | Cork | 96.3% | 19:13 | 15.3° |
| 8 | Ennis | Clare | 96.2% | 19:11 | 16.1° |
| 9 | Shannon | Clare | 96.2% | 19:11 | 16.0° |
| 10 | Limerick | Limerick & Clare | 96.1% | 19:12 | 15.9° |
| 11 | Galway | Galway | 96.0% | 19:10 | 16.3° |
| 12 | Castlebar | Mayo | 95.8% | 19:09 | 16.6° |
| 13 | Dungarvan | Waterford | 95.7% | 19:13 | 15.0° |
| 14 | Ballina | Mayo | 95.6% | 19:09 | 16.6° |
| 15 | Clonmel | Tipperary & Waterford | 95.6% | 19:12 | 15.2° |
| 16 | Tramore | Waterford | 95.4% | 19:12 | 14.8° |
| 17 | Waterford | Waterford & Kilkenny | 95.3% | 19:12 | 14.8° |
| 18 | Athlone | Westmeath & Roscommon | 95.1% | 19:10 | 15.7° |
| 19 | Kilkenny | Kilkenny | 95.1% | 19:11 | 15.0° |
| 20 | Sligo | Sligo | 95.0% | 19:09 | 16.3° |
| 21 | Tullamore | Offaly | 94.9% | 19:10 | 15.4° |
| 22 | Portlaoise | Laois | 94.9% | 19:11 | 15.2° |
| 23 | Longford | Longford | 94.8% | 19:10 | 15.7° |
| 24 | Carlow | Carlow & Laois | 94.8% | 19:11 | 14.9° |
| 25 | Wexford | Wexford | 94.8% | 19:12 | 14.4° |
| 26 | Athy | Kildare | 94.7% | 19:11 | 15.0° |
| 27 | Enniscorthy | Wexford | 94.7% | 19:12 | 14.6° |
| 28 | Mullingar | Westmeath | 94.6% | 19:10 | 15.4° |
| 29 | Kildare | Kildare | 94.6% | 19:11 | 15.0° |
| 30 | Newbridge | Kildare | 94.5% | 19:11 | 14.9° |
| 31 | Gorey | Wexford | 94.5% | 19:11 | 14.5° |
| 32 | Cavan | Cavan | 94.4% | 19:09 | 15.6° |
| 33 | Naas | Kildare | 94.4% | 19:10 | 14.9° |
| 34 | Arklow | Wicklow | 94.3% | 19:11 | 14.4° |
| 35 | Maynooth | Kildare | 94.2% | 19:10 | 14.9° |
| 36 | Celbridge | Kildare | 94.2% | 19:10 | 14.8° |
| 37 | Leixlip | Kildare | 94.2% | 19:10 | 14.8° |
| 38 | Letterkenny | Donegal | 94.1% | 19:07 | 16.1° |
| 39 | Navan | Meath | 94.1% | 19:10 | 15.0° |
| 40 | Ratoath | Meath | 94.1% | 19:10 | 14.9° |
| 41 | Wicklow | Wicklow | 94.1% | 19:11 | 14.4° |
| 42 | Ashbourne | Meath | 94.0% | 19:10 | 14.8° |
| 43 | Dublin | Dublin & Meath | 94.0% | 19:10 | 14.7° |
| 44 | Bray | Wicklow & Dublin | 94.0% | 19:10 | 14.5° |
| 45 | Greystones-Delgany | Wicklow | 94.0% | 19:11 | 14.5° |
| 46 | Drogheda | Louth & Meath | 93.9% | 19:10 | 14.9° |
| 47 | Malahide | Dublin | 93.9% | 19:10 | 14.7° |
| 48 | Swords | Dublin | 93.9% | 19:10 | 14.7° |
| 49 | Portmarnock | Dublin | 93.9% | 19:10 | 14.6° |
| 50 | Laytown-Bettystown-Mornington-Donacarney | Meath | 93.8% | 19:10 | 14.8° |
| 51 | Balbriggan | Dublin | 93.8% | 19:10 | 14.7° |
| 52 | Rush | Dublin | 93.8% | 19:10 | 14.7° |
| 53 | Skerries | Dublin | 93.8% | 19:10 | 14.7° |
| 54 | Dundalk | Louth | 93.7% | 19:09 | 15.0° |
Want the full story for one place — timeline, what you will see, safety, the escape to totality? Every row links to its own page. The ranking with the “what you’ll actually notice” column is on the best-towns page, and the same data plotted is on the map.
One rule that has no exceptions here
In a total eclipse there is a brief window when it is safe to look with the naked eye. Ireland does not get that window. Because the Sun is never fully covered anywhere in the country, certified EN ISO 12312-2 eclipse glasses stay on for the entire event — and you should check the pair you own before the day. Our glasses guide explains how, and the American Astronomical Society keeps the reference list of vetted suppliers . For the forecast, use Met Éireann — this site does not guess Irish weather.
Data source: our own eclipse-circumstances pipeline (JPL DE440s ephemerides), computed for the coordinates of each of the 54 Irish localities. Comparisons with Reykjavík and with the Spanish path are read from those countries’ own datasets on this site. Nothing on this page is estimated.