The harvest moon is September’s full moon. In 2026 it is full on Saturday 26 September 2026 at 5:49pm BST.
Where the name comes from
Royal Museums Greenwich: September’s full corn moon is so called because this is when crops are gathered at the end of the summer season.
Their guide to the full moon names is where that wording comes from, read on 10 September 2026.
Harvest Moon is a name for a month, then, not for a kind of moon.
What there is to see
The Harvest Moon is the one with a genuine astronomical quirk behind the folklore. Around the autumn equinox the Moon rises only a little later each night rather than the usual hour or so, so there are several evenings running with a bright moon close to sunset. That is what made it useful to people working late in the fields.
The equinox effect makes September different from every other month. On a normal night the Moon rises about fifty minutes later than the night before; around the harvest moon, at UK latitudes, that gap narrows to nearer half an hour. Several evenings running therefore have a big moon low in the east not long after sunset. That is the whole of the folklore, and it is true.
What people get wrong about it
That the harvest moon is always in September. It is the full moon nearest the autumn equinox, so roughly every three years it lands in October instead, and September's takes the corn moon name in its place. 2026 is a September year.
A note on searching for it: the plain phrase “harvest moon” mostly returns the Nintendo game and the Neil Young song rather than anything astronomical. Adding the year is the quickest way past that.
Harvest Moon dates
- 2026: Saturday 26 September 2026 at 5:49pm (BST)
- 2027: Thursday 16 September 2027 at 12:04am (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 harvest moon is the tenth of the 13 full moons in 2026. The one before it is the Sturgeon Moon on Friday 28 August 2026, and the one after is the Hunter's Moon on Monday 26 October 2026.
Full moon number 10 of 13 sits in the calendar with every date and London time. For what the Moon is doing on the nights either side of Saturday 26 September 2026 — waxing gibbous before, waning gibbous after — there is the eight phases of the Moon.
Why the date moves every year
The harvest moon falls on Saturday 26 September 2026 in 2026 and Thursday 16 September 2027 in 2027 — 354 days apart rather than 365. Twelve lunar cycles fall about eleven days short of the calendar year, which is why September’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 harvest moon as such, because there is nothing to draw — the harvest moon looks like every other full moon. What can be got wrong is the drawing itself, and harvest moon or no harvest moon, how to tell an accurate moon phase print is the checklist for that.
Written by Craig Fearn, Aphelion Prints. Last updated .
