OBSERVATORY LOG — ORIGINAL ASTRONOMY ART
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Every full moon has a name

Thirteen full moons in 2026, twelve in 2027, each with its traditional name and the exact minute it is full in London. Dates from NASA, checked against the Royal Observatory.

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A single full Moon high over an unlit open landscape on a clear night.

The next full moon is the Harvest Moon, full at Saturday 26 September 2026 at 5:49pm (BST). It is worth looking on both evenings around that time: the Moon reads as full for about a day either side.

There are thirteen full moons in 2026, not twelve, because May holds two: the Flower Moon on the 1st and a blue moon on the 31st. Every date below is the moment the Moon is exactly full, in London time.

Times are London local, computed by NASA’s Six Millennium Catalog of Phases of the Moon and checked against the Royal Observatory Greenwich full moon calendar for 2026. Both agree to the minute.

Every full moon in 2026

Every full moon in 2027

Times are London local, computed by NASA’s Six Millennium Catalog of Phases of the Moon. The Royal Observatory has not yet published a 2027 calendar, so these carry one source rather than two.

Why the full moons have names

The names are folk names for months rather than descriptions of the Moon. Royal Museums Greenwich puts the tradition this way: Many of the Moon’s nicknames have come to us from Native American culture because for their way of life, the cycles of the lunar phases were just as important a method of timekeeping as the longer solar cycle of the year. Each page above quotes that source for the name it covers.

Nothing about the Moon changes from one name to the next. A Strawberry Moon and a Wolf Moon are the same object at the same phase; what changes is the time of year, and with it how high the Moon rides and how long it stays up. That part is real, and it is why a June full moon looks orange from a British garden and a December one does not.

The exact minute, and why it rarely matters

A full moon is a geometry moment, not a night: the instant the Moon sits opposite the Sun. The times above are that instant. To the eye the Moon looks full for roughly a day either side, so a moon listed as full at four in the morning is worth looking at on both the evenings around it.

We publish the minute anyway, because getting it right is the whole argument for trusting anything else on this site. If you want the phases themselves explained, start with the eight phases of the Moon, and Looking up collects the rest of the night-sky guides.

Putting a moon on the wall

We make astronomy prints, so treat this as the bias it is. A moon phase print is one of the few decorative objects where the picture can simply be wrong: the phases in the wrong order, a terminator on the wrong side, a crescent that could not exist. How to tell an accurate moon phase print is the checklist, and it applies wherever you buy one. Our own moon and lunar wall art is the range it describes.

Written by Craig Fearn, Aphelion Prints. Last updated .

Questions, answered

How many full moons are there in 2026?
Thirteen. May has two, on the 1st and the 31st, and the second is a blue moon.
When is the next full moon in the UK?
The list above is in order; the next one is the first date that has not passed. Every time is London local.
Is there a blue moon in 2026?
Yes, on Sunday 31 May 2026 at 9:45am BST, the second full moon of that month. What the term does and does not mean is set out on its own page.
Are the full moon names official?
No. They are folk names, mostly reaching us through Native American tradition, and different sources disagree about several of them. Royal Museums Greenwich is the source quoted throughout this cluster.
Do the names mean the Moon looks different?
No. The Moon is the same. What changes with the season is how high it rides and how long it is up, and that does change how it looks from the UK.

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