The pink moon is April’s full moon. The next one is full on Tuesday 20 April 2027 at 11:27pm BST.
What is the April full moon called?
The Pink Moon. In the words of Royal Museums Greenwich: Northern Native Americans call April's full moon the pink moon after a species of early blooming wildflower.
Watching the pink moon from the UK
The Moon does not turn pink. The name is a wildflower, not a colour forecast, and every April a fresh round of disappointed people find that out. What you will see is an ordinary full moon, which is not a small thing.
April full moons sit at a middling height, and the evenings are long enough that moonrise can catch you out: it is not properly dark until well after nine. The Moon comes up over the eastern horizon looking oversized, which is an illusion of the eye and brain, not the atmosphere, and it shrinks as it climbs without ever changing size.
How high the pink moon climbs
From Greenwich on the night of 20 to 21 April 2027, 8 of 2027’s full moons climb higher than the pink moon and 3 stay lower.
| Pink Moon rises | 8:09pm, south-east |
|---|---|
| Pink Moon at its highest | 12:54am, 21° up, due south |
| Pink Moon sets | 5:28am, south-west |
| Time above the horizon | 9 hours for the Pink Moon |
| Sun at 12:54am | 27° below the horizon |
Also in the April sky
The Lyrid meteor shower peaks around 22 April. It is a modest shower, but it is the first decent one since January. The clocks have gone forward by now, so it is properly dark only after nine.
For April’s meteor dates and how much the Moon gets in the way, see UK meteor showers and the Moon.
What people get wrong about the pink moon
That it turns pink, which is the single most-searched wrong thing about any full moon. Every April the phrase trends and every April people photograph an ordinary white moon. The name is a wildflower, moss phlox, blooming in North America. Nothing about the light changes.
Searching for it? The plain phrase “pink moon” mostly returns Wikipedia and Spotify, for the Nick Drake album. Adding the year gets past that.
Pink Moon dates, London time
- 2026: Thursday 2 April 2026 at 3:12am (BST)
- 2027: Tuesday 20 April 2027 at 11:27pm (BST)
The 2026 pink moon time is from NASA and the Royal Observatory; 2027 is NASA only until the Observatory publishes.
In 2027 the pink moon falls on Tuesday 20 April 2027. Why named full moons drift.
The pink moon in the sequence
In 2026 the pink moon is the fourth of 13 full moons. It comes after the Worm Moon (Tuesday 3 March 2026), and the Flower Moon follows it on Friday 1 May 2026. On the nights either side of the pink moon the Moon isn’t quite full: it’s a waxing, then a waning, gibbous, and the eight phases of the Moon explains both.
Any moon print can be checked the same way, pink moon or not: how to tell an accurate moon phase print.
Written by Craig Fearn, Aphelion Prints. Last updated .
