The hunter's moon is October’s full moon. In 2026 it is full on Monday 26 October 2026 at 4:12am GMT.
Where the name comes from
Royal Museums Greenwich: After the harvest moon comes the hunter's moon, in the preferred month to hunt summer-fattened deer and fox unable to hide in bare fields.
Their guide to the full moon names is where that wording comes from, read on 10 September 2026.
Hunter's Moon is a name for a month, then, not for a kind of moon.
What there is to see
October full moons climb back up the sky as the year turns, and the nights are long enough to watch one properly without staying up to the small hours. In 2026 the moment of full falls at 4:12am, so the evening either side is the practical time to look.
October brings back long nights and a moon on the rise again, and the clocks going back at the end of the month puts moonrise back into the early evening. The air is often washed clean after autumn rain, which is when the Moon looks its hardest-edged. Of the autumn moons it is the one that asks least of you: up in the early evening, no need to stay awake for it.
What people get wrong about it
That it is bigger or brighter than the others. It is not; it follows the harvest moon and inherits some of the same early-moonrise effect, which is why both got names for working late. Size is decided by the Moon's distance that month, not by the label.
A note on searching for it: the plain phrase “hunter's moon” mostly returns a London pub and a Hungry Horse chain venue rather than anything astronomical. Adding the year is the quickest way past that.
Hunter's Moon dates
- 2026: Monday 26 October 2026 at 4:12am (GMT)
- 2027: Friday 15 October 2027 at 2:47pm (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 hunter's moon is the eleventh of the 13 full moons in 2026. The one before it is the Harvest Moon on Saturday 26 September 2026, and the one after is the Beaver Moon on Tuesday 24 November 2026.
Full moon number 11 of 13 sits in the calendar with every date and London time. For what the Moon is doing on the nights either side of Monday 26 October 2026 — waxing gibbous before, waning gibbous after — there is the eight phases of the Moon.
Why the date moves every year
The hunter's moon falls on Monday 26 October 2026 in 2026 and Friday 15 October 2027 in 2027 — 354 days apart rather than 365. Twelve lunar cycles fall about eleven days short of the calendar year, which is why October’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 hunter's moon as such, because there is nothing to draw — the hunter's moon looks like every other full moon. What can be got wrong is the drawing itself, and hunter's moon or no hunter's moon, how to tell an accurate moon phase print is the checklist for that.
Written by Craig Fearn, Aphelion Prints. Last updated .
