The cold moon is December’s full moon. In 2026 it is full on Thursday 24 December 2026 at 1:28am GMT.
Where the name comes from
Royal Museums Greenwich: The coming of winter earned December’s full moon the name cold moon.
Their guide to the full moon names is where that wording comes from, read on 10 September 2026.
Cold Moon is a name for a month, then, not for a kind of moon.
What there is to see
The highest full moon of the year from the UK, and the longest time above the horizon, because it sits opposite a Sun that barely gets up. In 2026 it falls on Christmas Eve.
December's full moon rides higher and stays up longer than any other, because it sits opposite a Sun that scarcely clears the horizon. From southern England it climbs to around sixty degrees; from Scotland it is lower but up for longer still. It is the full moon most likely to be genuinely useful, in the sense that you can walk by it.
What people get wrong about it
That December's is the biggest full moon of the year. Height is not size. It climbs highest and stays up longest, which makes it the most present, but how large it actually appears depends on where the Moon is in its orbit that month, and that has nothing to do with the season.
A note on searching for it: the plain phrase “cold moon” mostly returns a 2016 horror film, on the undated term rather than anything astronomical. Adding the year is the quickest way past that.
Cold Moon dates
- 2026: Thursday 24 December 2026 at 1:28am (GMT)
- 2027: Monday 13 December 2027 at 4:09pm (GMT)
Times London local, from NASA. The 2027 row carries one source, not two. How these dates were checked.
Where this sits in the year
The cold moon is the thirteenth of the 13 full moons in 2026. The one before it is the Beaver Moon on Tuesday 24 November 2026.
Full moon number 13 of 13 sits in the calendar with every date and London time. For what the Moon is doing on the nights either side of Thursday 24 December 2026 — waxing gibbous before, waning gibbous after — there is the eight phases of the Moon.
Why the date moves every year
The cold moon falls on Thursday 24 December 2026 in 2026 and Monday 13 December 2027 in 2027 — 355 days apart rather than 365. Twelve lunar cycles fall about eleven days short of the calendar year, which is why December’s moon keeps sliding earlier; run that far enough and a thirteenth moon has to be squeezed in, as 2026 does in May.
Our bias, stated: we sell moon and lunar wall art. None of it is a cold moon as such, because there is nothing to draw — the cold moon looks like every other full moon. What can be got wrong is the drawing itself, and cold moon or no cold moon, how to tell an accurate moon phase print is the checklist for that.
Written by Craig Fearn, Aphelion Prints. Last updated .
