The 2027 total solar eclipse: where and when to watch.

August 2, 2027 brings the longest totality visible from land until 2114 — up to six minutes and twenty-three seconds. Here is where the shadow falls, and where the sky is most likely to be clear.

On Monday, August 2, 2027, the Moon’s shadow will come ashore in southern Spain, run the length of North Africa, and cross Egypt in the early afternoon. For a little over six minutes at its best point, the sun will go out. It is the longest totality anyone standing on land will see between 1991 and 2114, and unlike most of the long ones, its shadow falls somewhere you can actually go.

Where the path runs

Totality begins over the Atlantic and makes landfall on the south coast of Spain, passing over Cádiz, Málaga and Gibraltar. From there it crosses Morocco, northern Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, enters Egypt, and continues through Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Somalia before lifting off over the Indian Ocean.

A partial eclipse will be visible across most of Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and it is worth being blunt about this: a partial eclipse is not a lesser version of the same experience. It is a different event. Ninety-nine per cent coverage still leaves daylight. Only inside the path does the sun actually go out, the temperature drop, the horizon light up in every direction at once, and the corona appear. There is no partial credit.

Why this one is so long

Most total eclipses give you two to three minutes. This one gives up to 6 minutes and 23 seconds at the point of greatest eclipse, over southern Egypt. Three things have to line up for that, and in August 2027 all three do.

• Earth is near aphelion — its farthest point from the Sun — in early August, so the Sun appears slightly smaller than average.
• The Moon is near perigee, its closest approach to Earth, so it appears slightly larger than average.
• The shadow crosses near the equator around local noon, the geometry in which it sweeps across the ground most slowly.

A large Moon covering a small Sun, moving slowly over the ground, buys minutes rather than seconds. It is the same arithmetic that made the 1973 eclipse over the Sahara famous among astronomers. And it will not happen again on land until 2114 — eighty-seven years from now, which is another way of saying that nobody who watches this one will be alive for the next.

The only question that matters: will you see it?

Everything above is fixed and knowable years ahead. The weather is not, and the weather is the whole gamble. Totality lasts a few minutes and a single well-placed cloud ends it. Choosing where to stand is therefore not a question of scenery or convenience — it is a question of which stretch of the path has the most dependable August sky.

Southern Spain is by far the easiest place to reach, and it will absorb an enormous share of the crowd for exactly that reason. It also sits near the beginning of the track, where totality is shorter, and it carries genuine August cloud risk off the Mediterranean. It is a reasonable choice for someone who wants a short trip and accepts the odds.

The desert interior of North Africa — Libya and Egypt — has the driest and clearest August skies anywhere along the path, and the longest totality. It is harder to reach. That is the entire trade, and it is worth stating plainly rather than dressing up: you are exchanging convenience for the probability of actually seeing the thing you travelled for.

Egypt: Luxor or Siwa

Within Egypt there are two very different answers. Luxor sits close to the centre line and takes the maximum — the full six minutes and change — which is why it is already the most-booked point on the entire path. It is also a temple town of modest size that will be absorbing tens of thousands of visitors in the same week, on the same roads, pointed at the same sky.

Siwa, in Egypt’s far northwest near the Libyan border, sits off the centre line and takes about five and a half minutes — roughly forty-five seconds less. In exchange it is an oasis of date palms and salt lakes with no eclipse infrastructure to speak of and very few people in it. Whether forty-five seconds is worth trading for that is a real question with a real answer on both sides, and we have written out our own reasoning at length elsewhere.

Watching it safely

For every part of the eclipse except totality itself you need filters certified to ISO 12312-2. Sunglasses are not enough — not stacked, not polarised, not the very dark ones. Neither is exposed film, a smoked lens, or a phone screen. During totality, and only during totality, the filters come off and you look with your own eyes: that is the entire point, and the corona is invisible through a solar filter. The moment the first bead of sunlight returns at the edge, they go back on.

Common questions

We run one departure for this eclipse, from the Siwa Oasis, capped at forty travelers. If the desert side of the trade appeals to you, that is what we built.