Madeira · sky events

The blood moon of 28 August 2026 from Madeira, the deepest partial lunar eclipse the island has seen since 1961

An eclipse you travel for is decided by the one thing you cannot book: whether the sky is clear on the right side of the island. Madeira runs different weather on its north and south coasts within the same hour.

The short answer

Madeira sits off the centre line of both events, so neither is total from here. On 12 August 2026 the moon covers 77.4% of the sun at 19:46 Madeira time, with the sun only 13.3 degrees above the western sea. On 2 August 2027 it covers 97.0% at 09:35, with the sun 26.3 degrees up in the east. The 2027 one is the deepest of the thirteen that theskylive.com lists for Funchal between now and 2052; the next closest is the 2028 annular at 83.2%.

For every eclipse this island gets, this one and the ones after it, the times are arithmetic and the sky is not. We track which side of Madeira is clear, for this date and for every future one, and that is the part the pass answers.

Where the sun sits during each eclipse, seen from Funchal. Horizontal axis is the compass bearing, vertical axis is the height above the horizon, and the filled dot is maximum. Computed with SunCalc from the contact times published for Funchal.

The times are published and fixed. Whether the plateau is clear at four in the morning is not, and that is a drive in the dark you commit to the night before. The pass scores it as a Moment, so the alarm is a decision and not a gamble.

Every solar eclipse visible from Madeira up to 2028

Date	From Madeira	Sun covered	Madeira time	Sun at maximum
12 August 2026	Partial	77.4%	18:49 to 20:39	13.3° W
6 February 2027	Partial	2.3%	17:36 to 18:30	7.2° SW
2 August 2027	Partial Deepest	97.0%	08:33 to 10:43	26.3° E
26 January 2028	Annular, a ring	83.2%	15:19 to 18:08	18.1° SW

Times are Funchal local and move by about a minute between the east and west ends of the island. The percentage column is obscuration, the fraction of the sun's area that is hidden, which is what you see. Most sites publish magnitude instead, which is the fraction of its diameter, and at small values the two are nowhere near each other: on 6 February 2027 the moon takes 7.4% of the diameter and 2.3% of the area. Sources: timeanddate.com for the times and magnitudes, theskylive.com for the obscuration.

2 August 2027: the deep one

What Madeira gets, and what it does not

The eclipse of 2 August 2027 is total, but the shadow track crosses southern Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Egypt, several hundred kilometres east and south of here. Over Luxor totality lasts 6 minutes 23 seconds, the longest over land this century. From Madeira the moon covers 97.0% of the sun and stops there. That last three percent is not a rounding detail: no corona appears and the sky never goes dark. It stays daylight from first contact to last.

Times, and which way to face

From Funchal the partial phase runs 08:33 to 10:43 local time, maximum at 09:35. The sun is 13.5 degrees above the horizon at first contact, 26.3 at maximum and 40.6 degrees when the moon finally leaves, on bearings of 77, 85 and 94 degrees. That is east, swinging slightly north of east, climbing the whole way. Sunrise is at 07:23, so the event begins over an hour after the sun is up, and it runs 2 hours and 10 minutes end to end.

Why every 2026 viewpoint is the wrong one

In August 2026 the sun sinks into the west-north-west, 13.3 degrees up at maximum and down to 2.3 at last contact, so what the evening needs is an open sea horizon on the west coast, and the obstacle is the island itself. In August 2027 the sun is in the east and climbing past 26.3 degrees. The two events sit in opposite halves of the sky, about 195 degrees apart in bearing. Somewhere that works for one has either the whole central massif or the whole ocean in the wrong direction for the other. Any spot list written for this August is actively misleading for next August, ours included.

What can be known a year out, and what cannot

Not the weather. Numerical models run about sixteen days ahead, so nothing published today is a forecast for 2 August 2027, and anything presented as one is invented. What is knowable now is the climatology: early August is the peak of the north-east trade flow, which stacks cloud against the north coast while the south and the far west stay clear more often, and it is also the season when Saharan dust is most likely in the air. Neither of those decides a single morning. That gets decided about three days out, which is when a forecast for one specific sky first exists at all.

12 August 2026: a low western sun

Times and cover

From Funchal the partial phase ran 18:49 to 20:39 Madeira time, maximum at 19:46, when 77.4% of the sun's disc was covered. Sunset followed at 20:57, so the eclipse ended about a quarter of an hour before the sun did and none of it happened in the dark. The sun fell from 25.5 degrees at first contact to 13.3 at maximum and 2.3 at last contact, on bearings 272, 279 and 286.

The coast is the whole decision

A sun 13.3 degrees above the sea was looking through several times the air a midday sun crosses, so haze and low cloud that would have been invisible overhead were enough to erase it. A bank sitting off one coast could hide the entire event while the interior stayed sunny, and on this island the north and the south routinely run different weather within the same hour. There was no way to pick the side in advance; it only became answerable a few days out.

How dark does 97% actually get?

Not dark

Obscuration is not brightness. The sun is roughly four hundred thousand times brighter than a full moon, so taking away 97.0% of its area still leaves something thousands of times stronger than a full moon overhead. What you notice at that depth is the light going cold and faintly metallic, shadows sharpening in a way that is hard to place, and the temperature dropping. No stars come out. Someone who has not been told it is happening can miss it.

The difference the last three percent makes

Totality is a different event, not a stronger version of this one. The corona, the horizon glowing the whole way round, the drop into something like deep twilight, and the one stretch where the sun can be looked at safely with bare eyes all belong to the seconds when the disc is fully covered. At 97.0% none of them happen. Worth knowing before you decide whether to fly to Spain or Morocco instead, which for this eclipse is a short flight.

The blood moon of 28 August 2026, before dawn

Before dawn on Friday 28 August 2026 the moon passes almost entirely into Earth's shadow: 93% of its diameter and 96.2% of its face inside the umbra at maximum, leaving one thin bright limb. Formally that is a partial eclipse rather than a total one, and the distinction is finer than it sounds. The shadowed part turns the coppery red people call a blood moon, for the same reason a sunset is red: the only light still reaching it has been bent and filtered through Earth's own atmosphere.

Madeira gets the whole partial phase, which the August solar eclipse could not offer

The umbral phase runs 03:33 to 06:52 Madeira time, deepest at 05:12. The moon is 42 degrees above the horizon at first contact, 28.4 degrees at maximum and still 10.6 degrees up at the end, with the sun a further 9.9 degrees below the horizon, so nothing is lost to moonset and nothing is lost to dawn. Compare the solar eclipse of the 12th: 77% covered, but with the sun 13.3 degrees above the sea at maximum and 2.6 degrees at last contact, minutes from setting. One bank of low cloud on the western horizon could take that event away entirely. This one asks for a sky and nothing else.

The deepest one Madeira has been able to watch since 1961

Five partial eclipses since 1961 have gone deeper than this one, and the island has been able to watch exactly one of them: 26 August 1961. Two of the others rose or set mid-eclipse and left Madeira a shallow slice, and one never cleared the horizon here at all. The next partial that goes deeper falls on 17 May 2068. A total eclipse arrives sooner, on 26 June 2029, and that one is the deepest total of the century. This is also the only lunar eclipse of 2026 visible from Madeira: the total of 3 March passed entirely below the horizon here.

No glasses, no filter, no equipment

Everything on this page about eye safety belongs to the solar eclipse and to no other event here. A lunar eclipse is the one kind you may look at directly, with bare eyes, for its whole duration, and through binoculars or a telescope just as safely. You are not looking at the sun. You are looking at a moon that is thousands of times fainter than it was an hour earlier. What it does ask for is ground dark enough to show the colour rather than only the shape.

Eye safety, which is not the optional part

Use eclipse glasses certified to ISO 12312-2 and nothing else. Sunglasses, smoked glass, exposed film and welding glass below shade 14 are all useless here. Never look through binoculars, a telescope or a camera viewfinder while wearing eclipse glasses, because the optics concentrate the light and burn straight through the filter. The retina has no pain receptors, so a 97.0% eclipsed sun feels comfortable enough to keep staring at while it is doing permanent damage, and the harm shows up hours later.

Questions

Will Madeira see totality on 2 August 2027?

No. The path of totality passes south and east of the island, across southern Spain, Morocco and North Africa. From Madeira it is a partial eclipse, 97.0% of the sun's disc covered at maximum. There is no corona and no darkness.

What time is the eclipse in Madeira on 2 August 2027?

From Funchal it begins at 08:33, reaches maximum at 09:35 and ends at 10:43, all Madeira local time, 2 hours and 10 minutes end to end. The sun is in the east, 26.3 degrees above the horizon at maximum.

Which is better from Madeira, 2026 or 2027?

2027 covers more sun, 97.0% against 77.4%, and it happens with the sun 26.3 degrees up in a mid-morning sky, so low cloud has less chance to sit in front of it. 2026 is the more photogenic of the two: a crescent sun low over the Atlantic a quarter of an hour before sunset. They also need opposite sides of the island, so they are not the same trip run twice.

Do I need to book or pay anything to watch?

No. Both are visible from any public place with a clear view in the right direction, and no trail booking is involved. The only equipment that matters is certified eclipse glasses.

When is the next annular or total eclipse visible from Madeira?

26 January 2028 brings an annular eclipse, a ring of fire, and it is visible from Funchal itself: 7 minutes and 1 second of ring from 16:47, with the sun 18 degrees above the south-west. It is the only one of the four where the moon sits entirely inside the sun's disc, which is what leaves the ring.

Sources: timeanddate.com · TheSkyLive Checked 17 Aug 2026.