Daylight hours in London, United Kingdom

Day length is the time between sunrise and sunset. Sunrise and sunset are the moments the top edge of the sun meets the horizon, allowing for the usual bending of light by the atmosphere. The calculator works this out for every day of the year from the location’s latitude and longitude.

In the northern hemisphere it falls at the December solstice, around 21 or 22 December, and the longest day is around 21 June. London gets about 7 hours 49 minutes of daylight in December and 16 hours 38 minutes in June. In the southern hemisphere the dates swap.

Solar noon drifts later through December, so sunsets start getting later before the solstice while sunrises keep getting later until after it. In London the earliest sunset is around 13 December and the latest sunrise around 30 December.

Days change fastest around the March and September equinoxes and hardly at all near the solstices. Near the equinox London gains or loses about 4 minutes a day, Edinburgh almost 5 and Madrid under 3. The Change column in the daily table gives the figure for each date.

Yellow is daylight. The three blues are twilight: civil twilight while the sun is up to 6° below the horizon, nautical twilight to 12° and astronomical twilight to 18°. The darkest colour is full night, and the line across the middle marks solar noon.

Close to the poles the sun can stay up all day in summer or below the horizon all day in winter, and twilight can last all night. Reykjavik’s shortest day has just over 4 hours of daylight, while its midsummer nights never get fully dark. The chart shows these days as solid daylight, twilight or night.

Yes. All times use the location’s own time zone, including daylight saving time, so sunrise and sunset jump by an hour on the dates the clocks change.