The wolf moon is January’s full moon. In 2026 it is full on Saturday 3 January 2026 at 10:03am GMT.
Where the name comes from
Royal Museums Greenwich: Named after the howling of hungry wolves lamenting the scarcity of food in midwinter.
Their guide to the full moon names is where that wording comes from, read on 10 September 2026.
Wolf Moon is a name for a month, then, not for a kind of moon.
What there is to see
January full moons ride high across a UK sky, because a full moon sits opposite the Sun and the Sun is at its lowest. High up means less atmosphere to look through, so it reads hard and bright rather than soft and orange.
Early January is the darkest stretch of the British year, which helps: sunset before four in the afternoon means a full moon is up and obvious by teatime. It also means cloud, and January is not a generous month for it. If the sky does clear, a high full moon washes out most of the fainter stars around it, so this is a night for looking at the Moon rather than past it.
What people get wrong about it
That it is the year's first full moon in any meaningful sense. It is first on our calendar, which is a human artefact; the lunar cycle pays it no attention. In some years January catches two full moons and in 2018 it caught two with a blue moon among them, which shifted every name after it.
Wolf Moon dates
- 2026: Saturday 3 January 2026 at 10:03am (GMT)
- 2027: Friday 22 January 2027 at 12:17pm (GMT)
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 wolf moon is the first of the 13 full moons in 2026. The one after it is the Snow Moon on Sunday 1 February 2026.
Full moon number 1 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 3 January 2026 — waxing gibbous before, waning gibbous after — there is the eight phases of the Moon.
Why the date moves every year
The wolf moon falls on Saturday 3 January 2026 in 2026 and Friday 22 January 2027 in 2027 — 384 days apart rather than 365. Twelve lunar cycles fall about eleven days short of the calendar year, which is why January’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 wolf moon as such, because there is nothing to draw — the wolf moon looks like every other full moon. What can be got wrong is the drawing itself, and wolf moon or no wolf moon, how to tell an accurate moon phase print is the checklist for that.
Written by Craig Fearn, Aphelion Prints. Last updated .
