Our Solar System

Moon phases in September 2026

The Moon is at last quarter on 4 September, new on 11 September, at first quarter on 18 September and full on 26 September (the Harvest Moon).

Full Moon of 26 September 2026, the Harvest Moon
The Harvest Moon, full on 26 September 2026 at 16:49 UTC
September 2026. Each day shows the Moon at the middle of the day, as it looks from the Northern Hemisphere; a day with one of the four main phases gives its time. Times in UTC.
MonTueWedThuFriSatSun
1 September: Waning gibbous, 80% lit2 September: Waning gibbous, 70% lit3 September: Waning gibbous, 60% lit4 September: Last quarter at 07:51, 48% lit5 September: Waning crescent, 37% lit6 September: Waning crescent, 26% lit
7 September: Waning crescent, 16% lit8 September: Waning crescent, 9% lit9 September: Waning crescent, 3% lit10 September: Waning crescent, 1% lit11 September: New Moon at 03:27, 0% lit12 September: Waxing crescent, 2% lit13 September: Waxing crescent, 7% lit
14 September: Waxing crescent, 13% lit15 September: Waxing crescent, 20% lit16 September: Waxing crescent, 28% lit17 September: Waxing crescent, 37% lit18 September: First quarter at 20:43, 47% lit19 September: Waxing gibbous, 56% lit20 September: Waxing gibbous, 65% lit
21 September: Waxing gibbous, 74% lit22 September: Waxing gibbous, 82% lit23 September: Waxing gibbous, 89% lit24 September: Waxing gibbous, 95% lit25 September: Waxing gibbous, 98% lit26 September: Full Moon at 16:49, 100% lit27 September: Waning gibbous, 99% lit
28 September: Waning gibbous, 96% lit29 September: Waning gibbous, 90% lit30 September: Waning gibbous, 82% lit

The main phases in September 2026

  • Last quarter Fri 4 Sep 2026 07:51 UTC
  • New Moon Fri 11 Sep 2026 03:27 UTC
  • First quarter Fri 18 Sep 2026 20:43 UTC
  • Full Moon: Harvest Moon Sat 26 Sep 2026 16:49 UTC

To the nearest minute. Our times agree with the US Naval Observatory's to within a minute and a half for every phase from 2026 to 2028. The Moon right now, live.

The Harvest Moon

The full Moon of Saturday 26 September 2026 at 16:49 UTC is the Harvest Moon in the Old Farmer's Almanac's list. It is 379,434 km from Earth, 71% of the way from apogee to perigee, so it is not a supermoon.

The Harvest Moon is the full Moon closest to the September equinox, which falls on 23 September 2026.

Every full Moon of 2026, with its name, is on full Moons in 2026.

Get the night of the Harvest Moon as a print: the sky over your own town that night, on a star map.

Get the Moon from your date as a print: the Moon as it looked on a day that matters to you.

See the night sky on any date, free: the stars, the planets and the Moon over any town.

Questions

When is the full Moon in September 2026?

Saturday 26 September 2026 at 16:49 UTC. It is the Harvest Moon.

When is the new Moon in September 2026?

Friday 11 September 2026 at 03:27 UTC.

Is there a supermoon in September 2026?

The full Moon of 26 September 2026 is 379,434 km from Earth, 71% of the way from apogee to perigee, so it is not a supermoon.

Why are the times in UTC?

Each phase happens at one moment for the whole world, and UTC is the clock everyone can convert from. With JavaScript on, this page also shows every time and the whole calendar in your own time zone, so a phase near midnight lands on your own date.

Sources

  1. US Naval Observatory: Phases of the Moon. Our times are checked against USNO's for every phase from 2026 to 2028 and agree to within a minute and a half
  2. US Naval Observatory: Phases of the Moon and percent of the Moon illuminated (how the phases, the percent lit and the Moon's age are defined)
  3. Fred Espenak, AstroPixels: Full Moon at Perigee (full supermoons), 2001 to 2100, and the test for one
  4. NASA Science: Supermoons
  5. The Old Farmer's Almanac: Full Moon names
  6. The Old Farmer's Almanac: the Hunter's Moon, the full Moon after the Harvest Moon
  7. NASA Watch the Skies: the monthly and seasonal blue moon
  8. NASA Eclipse Web Site (Espenak): eclipse dates
  9. Jean Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms (2nd edition, 1998): chapter 47, the lunar theory behind the Moon's place, phase and distance; chapter 48, the lit fraction and the bright limb; chapter 25, the Sun's aberration
  10. IAU Office of Astronomy for Education: the lunar phases seen from the Southern Hemisphere
  11. NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio, CGI Moon Kit (Ernie Wright, Noah Petro, 2019): the Moon's colour from the LROC Wide Angle Camera's Hapke-normalised mosaic, the face every Moon on these pages is drawn from
  12. LRO Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter, LDEM_64 heights (NASA PDS Geosciences Node): the slopes that shade the ground near the terminator
  13. Archinal et al. (2011), Report of the IAU Working Group on Cartographic Coordinates and Rotational Elements: 2009, Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy 109, 101: the Moon's pole and turning, so the drawn face shows the libration of the moment
  14. NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio, Moon Phase and Libration, 2026: what libration and the position angle of the axis are, and the frames we compared our drawing with
  15. NASA JPL Horizons: the Moon's sub-Earth point and pole angle, which our drawing matches to within 0.01 degrees on the dates we test
  16. Krisciunas and Schaefer (1991), A model of the brightness of moonlight, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 103, 1033: the Moon's brightness through its phases, which sets the earthshine against the sunlit side
  17. NASA Earth fact sheet: the Earth's radius and geometric albedo, for the earthshine
  18. The phases, distances and dates on this page are worked out by our own code from the sources above, the same lunar theory that places the Moon in the 3D viewer. The Moons are drawn by our own renderer from NASA's maps.