Eclipse España One country, three years, three eclipses

The total solar eclipse in 2026 is Spain's first in over a century, kicking off a remarkable 18 months of Spanish Moon-shadow fever. Jamie Carter is your tour guide

- Jamie Carter

Sun, sangria and... solar eclipses? Over the next few years, Spain will offer front-row seats to some of the most spectacular celestial shows on Earth, with three 'central' - that is, total or annular - solar eclipses in less than 18 months. This astonishing sequence looks set to make it Europe's eclipse-chasing epicentre for the rest of the decade. The standout is on Wednesday 12 August 2026: Spain's first total solar eclipse in over a century, during which a short totality will briefly reveal to the naked eye the sun's corona (Spanish for 'crown', incidentally), its tenuous outer atmosphere.

On that date, a path of totality will pass over the Arctic, Greenland, Iceland, the Atlantic, a speck of Portugal and northern Spain. Occurring just before sunset, totality will last under two minutes, first kissing Galicia on Spain's north coast, crossing a 290km-wide (180-mile) swathe to the Costa del Azahar and Costa Dorada before sinking beneath the Mediterranean Sea as seen from the Balearic Islands. If you were to look at Spain from space, the Moon's shadow would take just six minutes to cross the country, accelerating to over 32,000km/h (20,000mph) as it races toward sunset and slips off the edge of the Earth.

It will be 121 years since this last happened. Although a slice of northwestern Spain briefly experienced a hybrid eclipse – just one second of totality - on 17 April 1912, it was barely noticeable. The 2026 total solar eclipse is unmatched since an almost identical path of totality swept through northern Spain on 30 August 1905.