Ramadan Through the Seasons: How Long the Days of Ramadan Are, Year by Year, from London to Cape Town

The Short Answer

The Hijri year is about 11 days shorter than the solar year, so Ramadan starts about 11 days earlier each year and travels once through all the seasons in about 33 years. Where you live decides how much that matters. We computed the average daylight, sunrise to sunset, over every Ramadan from 2026 to 2059 in five cities:

• London (51° N): from 7.9 hours in the Ramadan that begins on 4 December 2032 to 16.6 hours in the one that begins on 2 June 2049.
• Mecca (21° N): from 10.9 hours to 13.4 hours over the same years.
• Jakarta (6° S): between 11.8 and 12.5 hours, every year.
• Cape Town (34° S): the mirror image of London, from 14.4 hours in 2032 to 9.9 hours in 2049.

This year's Ramadan, which began on 18 February 2026, sat in between: 11.2 hours in London and 11.8 in Mecca.

Why Ramadan Moves

A Hijri year of twelve lunar months lasts about 354.37 days; a solar year lasts 365.24. So each Ramadan begins about 10.9 days earlier in the solar calendar than the one before, and after about 33 years it has gone all the way round. Ramadan has no fixed season: the same month falls in winter, spring, summer and autumn over a lifetime. The same drift explains why a year can have two Eids, and why your Hijri birthday moves too.

The Daylight of Every Ramadan

The lines cross around 2040 and again around 2057. In those years Ramadan falls near an equinox, when day and night are about equal everywhere, and all five cities have close to 12 hours of daylight. In between, the lines spread apart: the farther a city is from the equator, the wider its swing.

The figures are averages over the whole month. Days lengthen or shorten through Ramadan itself, by up to about 1.9 hours between the first and the last day in London when Ramadan falls near an equinox.

Daylight Is Not the Same as the Fast

The fast runs from dawn (fajr) to sunset (maghrib), and dawn comes before sunrise. The difference is the morning twilight, and it is not a fixed amount. It is shortest near the equator, about an hour and ten minutes with the common convention of the Sun 18 degrees below the horizon, and longest at high latitudes in summer, where the sky may never get fully dark at all. Communities and authorities use different conventions for dawn in that case, and this site does not take a position on them. So the hours above are a lower bound: in any place, the fasting day is longer than its daylight by the length of the morning twilight.

Two Ramadans in One Year, and Ramadan on New Year's Day

Because Ramadan slides through the calendar, some Gregorian years contain the start of two Ramadans. 2030 is one: Ramadan begins on 5 January 2030 and again on 26 December 2030. In 2063 Ramadan begins on 1 January itself. Both are in the two Eids post, with the other years when the calendars line up this way.

Frequently Asked Questions

When is the next long-day Ramadan in the Northern Hemisphere?

The days of Ramadan get longer every year from about 2033 to 2049, when Ramadan begins on 2 June and covers the summer solstice. The longest Ramadans in London are those beginning in 2048 and 2049, both at about 16.5 hours of daylight.

When were the days last that long?

One cycle earlier, from 2015 to 2017, when Ramadan began in June or late May. The Ramadan that began on 6 June 2016 had 16.6 hours of daylight in London, the same as the one of 2049.

Why does Jakarta hardly change?

Near the equator, day and night are close to 12 hours all year, so it does not matter which season Ramadan falls in.

Are the start dates certain?

The dates are those of the Umm al-Qura calendar used in Saudi Arabia. Many countries begin Ramadan on a sighting of the crescent, which can be a day earlier or later, as explained in why Muslims start Ramadan on different days. A day either way changes the averages here by a few minutes at most.

See Also

• Which years have two Eids?
• How old are you in Hijri years?
• Why Muslims start Ramadan on different days
• When does Ramadan start in 2027?
• Ramadan dates 2027 to 2035
• The calendar page, for the dates of any Ramadan.

References

• Sunrise and sunset are computed with the astronomy engine of this site (standard refraction, upper limb), Ramadan dates from the Umm al-Qura table. The numbers are reproduced by docs/research/moon-cycles.mjs and computed by packages/astronomy/src/moonCycles.ts in the Hilal Vision source.