The flower moon is May’s full moon. In 2026 it is full on Friday 1 May 2026 at 6:23pm BST.
Where the name comes from
Royal Museums Greenwich: Many cultures refer to May's full moon as the flower moon thanks to the abundant blooming that occurs as spring gets going properly.
Their guide to the full moon names is where that wording comes from, read on 10 September 2026.
Flower Moon is a name for a month, then, not for a kind of moon.
What there is to see
By May a full moon stays low and skims the southern horizon, because the Sun is high and the Moon sits opposite it. Low moons pick up colour from the air, which is why May and June full moons often look warmer than winter ones.
From May onwards a British full moon barely gets above the rooftops. It rises late in the south-east, tracks low across the south and sets in the south-west, all inside a short night. That low path is worth planning for: a moon at ten degrees of altitude is behind a hedge from most gardens, and finding a clear southern horizon is most of the work.
What people get wrong about it
That May has one full moon. In 2026 it has two, and the second is the blue moon on the 31st. Anyone reading a twelve-row calendar this year is reading a table that has quietly lost a moon.
A note on searching for it: the plain phrase “flower moon” mostly returns the film Killers of the Flower Moon rather than anything astronomical. Adding the year is the quickest way past that.
Flower Moon dates
- 2026: Friday 1 May 2026 at 6:23pm (BST)
- 2027: Thursday 20 May 2027 at 11:59am (BST)
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 flower moon is the fifth of the 13 full moons in 2026. The one before it is the Pink Moon on Thursday 2 April 2026, and the one after is the Blue Moon on Sunday 31 May 2026.
Full moon number 5 of 13 sits in the calendar with every date and London time. For what the Moon is doing on the nights either side of Friday 1 May 2026 — waxing gibbous before, waning gibbous after — there is the eight phases of the Moon.
Why the date moves every year
The flower moon falls on Friday 1 May 2026 in 2026 and Thursday 20 May 2027 in 2027 — 384 days apart rather than 365. Twelve lunar cycles fall about eleven days short of the calendar year, which is why May’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 flower moon as such, because there is nothing to draw — the flower moon looks like every other full moon. What can be got wrong is the drawing itself, and flower moon or no flower moon, how to tell an accurate moon phase print is the checklist for that.
Written by Craig Fearn, Aphelion Prints. Last updated .
