On Monday, August 2, 2027, the Moon’s shadow will cross southern Spain, North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, producing the second-longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century. At its maximum, in southern Egypt near Luxor, the Sun will be completely covered for about 6 minutes 23 seconds. Only the eclipse of July 22, 2009 lasted longer this century, so no total eclipse for the rest of the 2000s will match it. In Tarifa, on Spain’s southern tip, totality will last about 4 minutes 39 seconds. For comparison, the famous total eclipse across the United States on April 8, 2024 reached a maximum of about 4 minutes 28 seconds.

The eclipse is exceptional not because of luck but because three separate factors line up at once: a Moon unusually close to Earth, a Sun unusually far away, and a shadow that falls almost straight down near the Tropic of Cancer at midday.

The path of totality

According to NASA’s eclipse predictions, prepared by Fred Espenak, the path of totality is about 258 km wide at its maximum. It begins over the Atlantic, crosses the Strait of Gibraltar and southern Andalusia, runs along northern Morocco, then continues east across North Africa, including Algeria and Libya among others, into Egypt. From there it crosses the Red Sea to the Arabian Peninsula, passes over Yemen and ends in the Horn of Africa near Somalia. Outside that narrow band, a partial eclipse will be visible across Europe, Africa and western Asia.

The point of greatest eclipse lies at 25.5° N, 33.2° E, in Egypt’s Red Sea Governorate, at 10:07 UTC, with the Sun 82 degrees above the horizon. The longest totality on land, about 6 minutes 23 seconds, falls in southern Egypt, in the area around Luxor, where the city itself gets about 6 minutes 22 seconds.

Local times and durations along the path

Because the path crosses countries with different clocks, the same eclipse happens at very different local times. Spain uses Central European Summer Time (UTC+2) in August, Morocco keeps UTC+1 outside Ramadan, and Egypt uses Eastern European Summer Time (UTC+3). Current local time for each country is on our Spain, Morocco and Egypt pages.

Times are based on published eclipse predictions; exact contact times vary by a few seconds depending on your precise position, so check a detailed local calculation before the day.

In the Strait of Gibraltar, totality arrives at almost the same moment on both shores, yet clocks in Tarifa will read about 10:45 and clocks in Tangier about 9:45. The shadow ignores time zones; the clocks don’t. worldtimedata

The table also shows why Morocco may be the better choice for anyone at the western end of the path. Tangier and Tétouan sit close to the centerline and get nearly 4 minutes 50 seconds of totality, while Tarifa sits closer to the northern edge. The duration drops quickly toward the edges of the path: Marbella, farther from the centerline, gets only 3 minutes 21 seconds.

Why this eclipse lasts so long

Totality lasts as long as the Moon’s disk more than covers the Sun’s disk from where you stand. Three things stretch it out on August 2, 2027.

The Moon is almost as close as it gets

The Moon reaches perigee, the closest point in its orbit, at 07:25 UTC on August 2, 2027, less than three hours before greatest eclipse. A closer Moon looks bigger. The Moon’s size in the sky varies over its orbit, even though its phases don’t change its actual size, a distinction covered in why the Moon’s size seems to change. At greatest eclipse, NASA’s data give the Moon an apparent radius of 16′43″ against the Sun’s 15′46″ as seen from Earth’s center, which makes the Moon’s disk about 6% wider than the Sun’s (our arithmetic). For an observer standing under a nearly overhead Moon, the effect is even larger, because that observer is about one Earth radius closer to the Moon than Earth’s center is. That is why the official eclipse magnitude, 1.079, is higher than the 6% figure: the extra distance adds roughly another 1.7%.

The Sun is near its smallest

Earth reaches aphelion, its farthest point from the Sun, in early July. A month later, the Sun is still close to its minimum apparent size. A small Sun is easier for the Moon to cover, and the combination of a near-perigee Moon with a near-aphelion Sun is the recipe for every exceptionally long total eclipse.

The shadow falls straight down near midday in the tropics

The Moon’s shadow sweeps across Earth from west to east, while Earth’s surface also rotates from west to east. Where the two motions line up, the shadow’s speed over the ground drops, and totality lasts longer. The effect is strongest near the equator, where the surface moves fastest, and near local noon, when the shadow falls almost vertically rather than stretching at an angle. At greatest eclipse the Sun stands 82 degrees above the horizon, close to overhead, and the eclipse’s gamma value of 0.142 means the shadow’s axis passes very near Earth’s center. Southern Egypt at midday in early August is nearly the ideal geometry: the Sun’s declination on August 2 is about 17.8° north, not far from the latitude of the greatest eclipse. For more on why the Sun’s highest point doesn’t always come at 12:00, see solar noon.

The local times above show the shadow’s pace. It reaches the Strait of Gibraltar around 08:45 UTC and southern Egypt around 10:05 UTC, covering roughly 3,800 km in about 80 minutes, an average of around 2,900 km/h over the ground (our estimate). The speed is not constant along the path: the shadow moves fastest near the ends, where it strikes Earth at a low angle, and slowest near the point of greatest eclipse in Egypt, which is why totality peaks there.

A long line of long eclipses: Saros 136

Eclipses repeat in families called saros series, separated by 18 years, 11 days and about 8 hours. After each cycle, the Sun, Moon and the lunar orbit’s nodes return to nearly the same geometry, so eclipses in the same series look alike. The extra eight hours shift each new eclipse about 120 degrees of longitude to the west. The August 2, 2027 eclipse is member 38 of 71 in Saros 136, a series famous for exceptionally long totalities. Its previous member, on July 22, 2009, produced 6 minutes 39 seconds, the longest total eclipse of the 21st century. The 2009 maximum, however, fell over the Pacific Ocean, while the 2027 maximum falls on land, in one of the sunniest regions on Earth in August. The next member of the series crosses the United States on August 12, 2045.

The series is past its peak. Its longest totalities came in the 20th century, including 7 minutes 8 seconds on June 20, 1955, and each successive eclipse in the series is now slightly shorter as the shadow’s path drifts north. How the Moon’s orbit produces solar and lunar eclipses in the first place is explained in why eclipses happen.

Spain’s second total eclipse in under a year

For Spain, August 2027 closes an unusual run. The total solar eclipse of August 12, 2026 already crossed northern and eastern Spain around sunset. The 2027 eclipse follows less than a year later, this time over the far south, and an annular eclipse on January 26, 2028 will produce a “ring of fire” over southern Spain late in the afternoon. After that, no total solar eclipse will be visible from Spain until 2053, making August 2027 the last chance in a generation for anyone in the country.

Weather, heat and safe viewing

August weather along the path is generally favorable. Southern Egypt in early August is among the most reliably cloud-free places in the world, and the high Sun means totality occurs close to midday. That also means extreme heat: afternoon temperatures in Luxor routinely exceed 40°C in August, so shade, water and a plan for the hours around the eclipse matter as much as the four or six minutes of darkness. Conditions around the Strait of Gibraltar are more variable; records compiled by timeanddate.com show that August 2 was cloudy in Tangier about 43% of the time since 2000.

The partial phases last well over two hours at every location on the path. During all of them, the Sun must only be viewed through certified solar filters meeting the ISO 12312-2 standard; sunglasses and smoked glass offer no protection. Only during totality itself, when the Sun’s bright surface is completely covered, is it safe to look with the naked eye, and filters must go back on the moment the first bead of sunlight reappears at the edge of the Moon.