The solar eclipse of 12 August 2026, seen from the United Kingdom
Wednesday 12 August 2026, early evening. The Moon's shadow crosses the North Atlantic, clips Iceland and comes ashore in northern Spain — and the United Kingdom sits just off the edge of it. Nowhere in the country is inside the path of totality, and no honest page will tell you otherwise. What the UK does get is the deepest partial solar eclipse it has had in a generation: between 89.6% and 96.4% of the Sun swallowed, at around 19:03–19:16 BST, with the Sun hanging only 9.4–15.9° above the western horizon. The Royal Observatory Greenwich calls it the UK's best solar eclipse since 1999.
A note on what you are reading, because this site covers several countries: this section is the eclipse as seen from the UK. The rest of our English coverage is about Spain, where the eclipse is total, and there are separate sections for Iceland (where it is total) and for Ireland (a partial eclipse a few points deeper than Britain's). Everything below is computed for British coordinates and British Summer Time.
The UK eclipse in numbers
- Deepest in the UK
- 96.4% in Hugh Town, England — maximum at 19:16
- Shallowest in the UK
- 89.6% in Aberdeen, Scotland — the far north-east
- Towns and cities computed
- 220 20 of them at 94% or more; 0 inside totality
- Sun's altitude at maximum
- 9.4–15.9° very low — a clear western horizon matters more than anything else
All times British Summer Time (BST, UTC+1) — the clock time everywhere in the UK on 12 August 2026. The partial phase starts around 18:06 and the last contact anywhere in the dataset is at 20:10.
Where in the UK the eclipse is deepest — and why
The path of totality passes to the south and west of the British Isles, so the closer you stand to it the more of the Sun disappears. That produces a clean diagonal gradient across the country: the far south-west sees the most, the north-east the least. The extremes in our dataset are Hugh Town at 96.4% — the southernmost point in the whole dataset, at 49.9° N, 6.3° W, out in the Isles of Scilly — and Aberdeen at 89.6%. That whole spread is under seven percentage points, which is the useful, unglamorous truth: for most people it is not worth driving across the country for a couple of extra per cent.
The other axis is time. Maximum eclipse sweeps west across the UK, from 19:03 in the north-east to 19:16 in the far south-west — a difference of barely a quarter of an hour.
Everything for eclipse day in the UK
The best UK cities, ranked
All 220 towns and cities in order of how much Sun is covered, with the local time of maximum, the Sun's height and an honest line on what you will actually notice in each.
The UK viewing guide
Eye safety in plain English, a step-by-step of the evening on London's timings, and the one piece of practical advice that decides whether you see anything at all: the western horizon.
Map of the UK eclipse
Our own plot of all 220 localities, shaded by how much of the Sun goes dark, with the major cities labelled and linked.
Certified eclipse glasses
How to check an EN ISO 12312-2 marking in two minutes, what never to use, and why a 90%-plus partial is exactly the situation in which people damage their eyes.
Next door: the Republic of Ireland
A separate country with a separate dataset, and a slightly deeper eclipse than Britain's: 93.7% to 97.1% of the Sun covered across 54 towns and cities. Northern Ireland stays here, in the UK section.
Nation by nation
The range of obscuration across the towns we compute in each of the four nations, and the deepest place in each:
| Nation | Towns computed | Sun covered | Deepest place |
|---|---|---|---|
| England | 188 | 89.7–96.4% | Hugh Town (96.4%) |
| Wales | 14 | 92.1–94.3% | Milford Haven (94.3%) |
| Northern Ireland | 7 | 92.9–93.8% | Derry (93.8%) |
| Scotland | 11 | 89.6–91.5% | Paisley (91.5%) |
The eight deepest places in the UK
All in the far south-west, all within a few per cent of each other. The full list of 220 is on the ranking page.
| # | Place | Nation | Sun covered | Maximum | Sun height |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hugh Town | England | 96.4% | 19:16 | 13.4° |
| 2 | Penzance | England | 95.8% | 19:16 | 13° |
| 3 | St Ives | England | 95.7% | 19:16 | 13° |
| 4 | Camborne | England | 95.5% | 19:16 | 12.9° |
| 5 | Redruth | England | 95.5% | 19:16 | 12.9° |
| 6 | Falmouth | England | 95.4% | 19:16 | 12.7° |
| 7 | Truro | England | 95.3% | 19:16 | 12.8° |
| 8 | Newquay | England | 95.2% | 19:15 | 12.8° |
And in London?
91.4% of the Sun covered, maximum at 19:13, with the Sun 10.3° above the horizon — lower than almost anywhere else in the country, because London sits far to the east. The partial phase runs from 18:17 to 20:06, which is exactly the window the Royal Observatory Greenwich publishes for the capital: an independent check on the figures here, since our times are computed from JPL ephemerides and theirs are not ours. Full London page →
At 91.4% the Moon takes an enormous bite out of the Sun, yet the light stays close to normal: the eye compensates so well that, without eclipse glasses, most people walking past would miss it entirely. Look through the filter and the crescent is unmistakable. The catch is height: at maximum the Sun is only 10.3° above the horizon, so a clear, unobstructed view to the west-north-west matters more than anything else.
If you want to be under the shadow itself
A deep partial and a total eclipse are not the same event at different strengths — they are different events. Only when the last sliver of the photosphere goes out do you get the corona, the wrap-around twilight and the few seconds when it is safe to look with your own eyes. From the UK, two destinations put you inside the path on the same evening:
- Iceland. About two to three hours' flight from most UK airports, and — uniquely for this eclipse — the capital is inside the path: Reykjavík gets 1m 02s of totality at 17:48 local time with the Sun 24.5° high — no horizon problem at all. The nearest Icelandic point in the path to London is Mosfellsbær, 1,879 km away. Our Iceland section →
- Northern Spain. The longest stretch of this eclipse over inhabited land. The nearest Spanish point in the path to London is Noja ( Cantabria), about 928 km away, with 0m 51s of totality. Spain's eclipse is also a low-Sun one, close to sunset. Our English coverage of Spain →
Distances are straight-line, between coordinates — not travel distances.
Will it be clear?
Nobody can tell you that today, and any page that gives you a percentage chance of cloud for a specific British town on a specific evening months out is guessing. What is worth planning for: the Sun will be very low, so cloud sitting on the western horizon will hide the eclipse even under an otherwise blue sky. Check the Met Office forecast in the final days, pick a viewpoint with an open west-north-westerly horizon, and have a second one in mind.
Method: circumstances computed for the coordinates of each of the 220 UK localities with JPL DE440s ephemerides — the same pipeline behind our Spanish and Icelandic pages. Obscuration is the fraction of the Sun's area covered; magnitude, quoted on each town's page, is the fraction of its diameter, which is why magnitude always sounds bigger. No figure here is estimated, and none is taken from a third party; the Royal Observatory Greenwich statement above is quoted and linked as theirs.