The strawberry moon is June’s full moon. In 2026 it is full on Tuesday 30 June 2026 at 12:57am BST.
Where the name comes from
Royal Museums Greenwich: The harvesting of strawberries in June gives that month’s full moon its name.
Their guide to the full moon names is where that wording comes from, read on 10 September 2026.
Strawberry Moon is a name for a month, then, not for a kind of moon.
What there is to see
June gives the lowest full moon of the year from the UK, and the shortest window of proper darkness to see it in. It sits close to the horizon all night, which is exactly the situation that makes a moon look large and orange.
This is the lowest full moon of the British year, and the one people most often photograph, because it hangs on the horizon rather than passing overhead. The colour is the atmosphere doing what it does to any low light source, the same physics that reddens a sunset. It is real, it just is not seasonal, and it is not the strawberries.
What people get wrong about it
That the orange colour is something to do with June. It is not. Any moon that low looks that colour, and a low winter moon does the same. What is special about June is that the Moon cannot get high, so it stays in the colour-shifting part of the sky all night.
Strawberry Moon dates
- 2026: Tuesday 30 June 2026 at 12:57am (BST)
- 2027: Saturday 19 June 2027 at 1:44am (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 strawberry moon is the seventh of the 13 full moons in 2026. The one before it is the Blue Moon on Sunday 31 May 2026, and the one after is the Buck Moon on Wednesday 29 July 2026.
Full moon number 7 of 13 sits in the calendar with every date and London time. For what the Moon is doing on the nights either side of Tuesday 30 June 2026 — waxing gibbous before, waning gibbous after — there is the eight phases of the Moon.
Why the date moves every year
The strawberry moon falls on Tuesday 30 June 2026 in 2026 and Saturday 19 June 2027 in 2027 — 354 days apart rather than 365. Twelve lunar cycles fall about eleven days short of the calendar year, which is why June’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 strawberry moon as such, because there is nothing to draw — the strawberry moon looks like every other full moon. What can be got wrong is the drawing itself, and strawberry moon or no strawberry moon, how to tell an accurate moon phase print is the checklist for that.
Written by Craig Fearn, Aphelion Prints. Last updated .
