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Shortest day of 2026: hours of daylight in 42 European capitals

On 21 December 2026, Reykjavík gets 4 h 07 min of daylight and Nicosia 9 h 47 min. We calculated sunrise and sunset in 42 European capitals and checked every time against the US Naval Observatory.

By Antonin, Rankcomet Source: Our calculation, checked against the US Naval Observatory

Capital Daylight
1 Reykjavík 4 h 07 min
2 Helsinki 5 h 48 min
3 Oslo 5 h 53 min
4 Tallinn 6 h 02 min
5 Stockholm 6 h 04 min
See the full ranking (42)
6 Riga 6 h 43 min
7 Copenhagen 7 h 01 min
8 Vilnius 7 h 13 min
9 Dublin 7 h 30 min
10 Berlin 7 h 39 min
11 Amsterdam 7 h 40 min
12 Warsaw 7 h 42 min
13 London 7 h 49 min
14 Brussels 7 h 56 min
15 Kyiv 8 h 00 min
16 Prague 8 h 03 min
17 Luxembourg 8 h 08 min
18 Paris 8 h 14 min
19 Bratislava 8 h 20 min
19 Vienna 8 h 20 min
21 Budapest 8 h 26 min
22 Vaduz 8 h 29 min
23 Bern 8 h 30 min
23 Chișinău 8 h 30 min
25 Ljubljana 8 h 38 min
26 Zagreb 8 h 39 min
27 Belgrade 8 h 47 min
28 Bucharest 8 h 50 min
29 San Marino 8 h 53 min
30 Sarajevo 8 h 54 min
31 Monaco 8 h 55 min
32 Sofia 9 h 02 min
33 Andorra la Vella 9 h 03 min
34 Podgorica 9 h 04 min
35 Rome 9 h 07 min
35 Skopje 9 h 07 min
37 Tirana 9 h 11 min
38 Madrid 9 h 17 min
39 Lisbon 9 h 27 min
40 Athens 9 h 31 min
41 Valletta 9 h 43 min
42 Nicosia 9 h 47 min

Reykjavík gets the least daylight of any European capital on the shortest day of 2026: 4 h 07 min, from 11:22 to 15:29. Nicosia gets the most, 9 h 47 min. The average across the 42 capitals is 8 h 08 min, and 14 of them stay under 8 hours.

Latitude sets the length of the day

The ranking follows latitude almost exactly. Reykjavík lies at 64.1° north, Nicosia at 35.2°. Helsinki (5 h 48 min) and Oslo (5 h 53 min) come next, then Tallinn and Stockholm, both just over 6 hours.

Cities at the same latitude end up level. Vienna and Bratislava, about 55 km apart, share 19th place with 8 h 20 min. Bern and Chișinău, both near 47° north, share 23rd with 8 h 30 min.

London gets 7 h 49 min, from 8:04 to 15:53, and ranks 13th. Dublin, further north and west, gets 7 h 30 min.

Time zones move the clock

Latitude decides how long the day lasts. When it starts and ends depends on where a city sits inside its time zone.

Stockholm has the earliest sunset of the 42 capitals, at 14:48, 41 minutes before Reykjavík. Thirteen capitals see the sun go down before 4 pm.

Madrid has the latest, at 17:51, 3 h 03 min after Stockholm. The city lies west of Greenwich, at 3.7° west, yet keeps Central European Time, one hour ahead of Lisbon. Its sun rises at 8:34, 43 minutes after Lisbon’s.

Amsterdam is in the same position. Its sun rises at 8:48, later than in Stockholm (8:43), a city 7 degrees further north.

Warsaw shows the opposite effect. The sun sets there at 15:25, 18 minutes before Riga, although Warsaw gets 59 more minutes of daylight. Riga runs on Eastern European Time, one hour ahead.

The earliest sunset comes before the solstice

In Paris, the sun sets earliest around 11 December, at 16:54, and rises latest around 1 January, at 8:44. The shortest day falls between the two.

The reason is solar noon, which drifts later by about 30 seconds a day at this time of year: 12:44 in Paris on 11 December, 12:54 on 1 January. Evenings start to stretch in mid-December, while mornings keep getting darker until New Year.

After 21 December

By 31 January 2027, Paris gets 9 h 23 min of daylight and the sun sets at 17:46. Reykjavík gains 2 h 52 min over the same 41 days, Nicosia 39 minutes.

Daylight in Paris on the 21st of each month, December 2026 to June 2027

In black, the winter solstice. Source: our calculation, checked against the US Naval Observatory

On the June solstice, 21 June 2027, Paris gets 16 h 10 min of daylight, almost twice as much as on 21 December.

Key figures

of daylight in Reykjavík, the shortest of 42 capitals
4 h 07 min
in Nicosia, the longest
9 h 47 min
sunset in Stockholm, the earliest
14:48
on average across the 42 capitals
8 h 08 min

How we calculated this

Scope: the capitals of the member states of the Council of Europe that the UN M49 standard places in Europe, plus Cyprus, as in our public holidays ranking, with Kyiv added, since martial law changes nothing about daylight. The Netherlands count with Amsterdam, the capital named in its constitution, and Switzerland with Bern, its federal city. Daylight is the time from sunrise to sunset on Monday 21 December 2026, the day of the December solstice (20:50 UTC). Sunrise and sunset are the moments when the top of the Sun’s disc crosses a sea-level horizon, with the standard 34 arcminutes of atmospheric refraction used by the US Naval Observatory and NOAA. Hills and mountains around a city are ignored. Each capital sits at its GeoNames coordinates, downloaded on 26 October 2026. Times come from the Astronomy Engine library and are cut to whole minutes, so 4:07:32 shows as 4 h 07 min. Capitals with the same displayed time share a rank. Check: every sunrise and sunset is within one minute of the US Naval Observatory’s figures, downloaded on 26 October 2026, and Wikidata coordinates instead of GeoNames change no capital’s daylight by more than 25 seconds. The CSV adds local sunrise and sunset times, and the daylight to the second.

Download the data (CSV)

Cite this ranking

Rankcomet (2026). Shortest day of 2026: hours of daylight in 42 European capitals. Updated October 26, 2026. https://rankcomet.com/shortest-day-daylight/

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