December 2026 Moon Phase Calendar

December 2026 carries one full moon (the Cold Moon, landing close enough to Christmas Eve this particular year to be a genuine calendar coincidence — see our dedicated page) and one New Moon. This month's New Moon window falls conveniently close to the Geminid meteor shower's typical December 13-14 peak, one of the most reliably active annual showers, worth checking the exact dates against each other for the darkest possible viewing.

December offers the year's longest nights for Northern Hemisphere viewers, especially around the solstice (usually December 21-22) — genuinely more darkness-hours available for stargazing than any other month, offset by the coldest, often harshest observing conditions of the year. Winter's brightest constellations (Orion, Taurus, the Pleiades) dominate the evening sky by month's end.

For anglers, winter fishing patterns shift substantially with water temperature regardless of lunar phase, though solunar practitioners still track this month's New and Full Moon windows. For gardeners, this is typically the quietest month of the traditional outdoor lunar planting calendar across most temperate regions, with activity mostly limited to indoor and greenhouse growing.

The specific dates for this month sit in the calendar above; the Cold Moon's own page explains the real solstice-driven high-arcing effect behind its alternate Long Night Moon name.

This full moon falls in Cancer — under the older almanac zodiac-gardening system, one of the three signs (alongside Scorpio and Pisces) rated most favorably for planting — largely academic for outdoor gardeners this deep into a Northern Hemisphere winter, but worth knowing if you're growing indoors or in a greenhouse and want to follow the tradition to the letter.

December's New Moon window, right around the Geminid meteor shower's typical peak, is one of the best combined viewing opportunities of the whole year for Northern Hemisphere skywatchers — the Orion Nebula and the winter Milky Way are both well placed by early evening, and the year's longest nights mean genuinely more darkness-hours to use than any other month offers.

This is also the coldest month for most temperate-latitude observers, so the same cold-weather precautions from November apply and then some — a thermos of something warm, hand and toe warmers, and limiting continuous outdoor time all make a real difference to how long a session actually lasts before the cold cuts it short.

Day length reaches its slowest rate of change right around the solstice this month — sunset and sunrise times barely shift for a week or two on either side of it, the mirror-image moment to June's solstice standstill, before daylight hours begin their slow climb back upward through January and February.

A hot beverage in an insulated container is a small addition that makes a genuinely large difference to how long most people stay outside comfortably this month.

This month's holiday season can make finding a quiet, uninterrupted viewing window trickier than usual — worth planning around a specific quieter evening rather than assuming any night will work.

This month's cold makes a thermos and warm layers more valuable than any piece of specialized viewing equipment.

This month's long nights offer plenty of dark-sky time, even if only a portion of it is actually used for viewing.

This month's holiday busyness is worth planning around specifically, since a quiet, uninterrupted evening can be harder to find than the weather itself.

This month rewards planning around the holiday calendar as much as the weather itself.

Its long nights offer genuine opportunity, even if only part of that darkness actually gets used.