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Equinox and Solstice 2028

The four turning points of 2028, to the minute — and the season each one opens, which depends on your hemisphere.

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The instant is the same everywhere on Earth; only the season it starts depends on your hemisphere.

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Solstices and equinoxes · 2028

  • March equinoxMarch 20 at 02:17 AM UTC

    Day and night are close to equal length everywhere on Earth.

    Length: 92.7 days

  • June solsticeJune 20 at 08:01 PM UTC

    The longest day of the year north of the equator, and the shortest south of it.

    Length: 93.7 days

  • September equinoxSeptember 22 at 11:45 AM UTC

    Day and night are close to equal length everywhere on Earth.

    Length: 89.9 days

  • December solsticeDecember 21 at 08:19 AM UTC

    The shortest day of the year north of the equator, and the longest south of it.

    Length: 89 days

Why the dates move from year to year

A tropical year — the time the Earth takes to return to the same point in its orbit relative to the Sun — lasts about 365.2422 days, while a civil year has 365 or 366. Those extra hours have to go somewhere: each ordinary year pushes the instant roughly six hours later, and each leap day pulls it a full day back. That is the whole reason a solstice can fall on the 20th one year and the 21st the next.

The instant itself is the same for the entire planet. What changes with where you are is the local clock time — and the name of the season it opens. The March equinox begins spring north of the equator and autumn south of it, which is why this page names the event rather than the season.

The four seasons are not the same length, and the difference is measured in days rather than hours. Earth’s orbit is an ellipse, and the planet moves fastest near perihelion in early January — so the stretch from the December solstice to the March equinox is the shortest of the year, and the one from June to September the longest.

This is a leap year, so 29 February pulls every instant after it a full day earlier in the calendar compared with the year before.

Frequently asked questions

Are the times shown in my time zone?

Yes. The instants are calculated in UTC and converted in your browser, so the date you see may differ by one day from a source that publishes UTC. A solstice at 23:40 UTC on the 21st is already the 22nd in Tokyo.

Why does the date change from one year to the next?

Because the tropical year is about a quarter of a day longer than a 365-day calendar year. The instant drifts roughly six hours later each ordinary year, and the leap day resets it. Over a four-year cycle the same event lands on two or three different calendar dates.

Is the equinox exactly twelve hours of day and twelve of night?

Not quite. Atmospheric refraction lifts the Sun’s image above the horizon, and sunrise counts from the moment the upper edge appears rather than the centre. Both effects add a few minutes of daylight, so the day of exactly equal light and dark — the equilux — falls a few days before the March equinox and a few days after the September one, depending on latitude.

What is the difference between a solstice and an equinox?

At an equinox, day and night are close to equal length everywhere on Earth. At a solstice, one hemisphere has its longest day of the year while the other has its shortest. The words describe two different geometries, not two names for the same thing.

How accurate are these times?

They follow the method in chapter 27 of Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms, with the 24 periodic terms that correct for planetary perturbations. The error is under a minute for any year in the supported range.

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