AMZBooking Research · data story
How much daylight do travel destinations get in December?
Sunrise, sunset and hours of daylight on 21 December 2026 at the 294 destinations of our travel guides, computed for each one — and how different the same clock can look.
Published · Data from
Key findings
- 1
On 21 December 2026, the shortest day of the year north of the equator, the median destination in our travel guides gets 9 h 51 min of daylight; 34 of the 294 get less than 8 hours.
How we calculated this: Median sunrise-to-sunset time across the 294 destinations on 21 December 2026, and the count under 8 hours.
- 2
Tromsø (Norway) sees no sunrise at all (polar night). Next is Reykjavík (Iceland): the sun rises at 11:22 and sets at 15:29, 4 h 07 min of daylight.
How we calculated this: Destinations ordered by sunrise-to-sunset time; polar night = the sun stays below the horizon all day.
- 3
The most daylight is in Queenstown (New Zealand): 15 h 38 min. The top 36 destinations by daylight are all in the Southern Hemisphere, where 21 December is the longest day.
How we calculated this: Maximum sunrise-to-sunset time; the run of top destinations with a southern latitude.
- 4
One clock, very different winter evenings: on UTC+01:00 the sun sets at 14:48 in Stockholm (Sweden) and at 18:10 in Seville (Spain), 3 h 22 min later.
How we calculated this: Among Northern Hemisphere destinations sharing a UTC offset on 21 December 2026, the offset with the largest gap between the earliest and latest local sunset.
- 5
The earliest sunset is in Stockholm (Sweden) at 14:48 local time; the latest in Queenstown (New Zealand) at 21:32.
How we calculated this: Earliest and latest local clock time of sunset among destinations where the sun sets.
- 6
Tromsø (Norway) goes from midnight sun in June to polar night in December. Among places where the sun rises and sets on both days, the biggest change is in Reykjavík (Iceland): 21 h 09 min of daylight on 21 June 2026, 4 h 07 min on 21 December 2026.
How we calculated this: Difference between sunrise-to-sunset time on 21 June 2026 and on 21 December 2026.
- 7
Near the equator the season barely changes the day: 12 destinations get within 30 minutes of 12 hours of daylight on both dates, among them Langkawi (Malaysia), Medellín (Colombia), Penang (Malaysia), Bogotá (Colombia).
How we calculated this: Destinations whose sunrise-to-sunset time is within 30 minutes of 12 hours on both reference dates.
Chart
- TromsøNorwayNo sunrise
- ReykjavíkIceland
- AnchorageUnited States
- BergenNorway
- HelsinkiFinland
- OsloNorway
- TallinnEstonia
- StockholmSweden
- GothenburgSweden
- RigaLatvia
- EdinburghUnited Kingdom
- GlasgowUnited Kingdom
- CopenhagenDenmark
- VilniusLithuania
- BelfastUnited Kingdom
- YorkUnited Kingdom
- HamburgGermany
- ManchesterUnited Kingdom
- LiverpoolUnited Kingdom
- DublinIreland7 h 30 min
Distribution
- under 6 h6
- 6–8 h
- 8–10 h
- 10–12 h
- 12–14 h
- 14 h and over14
The data
| Rank | Destination | Country | Sunrise | Sunset | Daylight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tromsø | Norway | no sunrise | no sunrise | No sunrise |
| 2 | Reykjavík | Iceland | 11:22 | 15:29 | 4 h 07 min |
| 3 | Anchorage | United States | 10:14 | 15:41 | 5 h 27 min |
| 4 | Bergen | Norway | 09:45 | 15:29 | 5 h 45 min |
| 5 | Helsinki | Finland | 09:24 | 15:13 | 5 h 49 min |
| 6 | Oslo | Norway | 09:18 | 15:12 | 5 h 54 min |
| 7 | Tallinn | Estonia | 09:18 | 15:20 | 6 h 03 min |
| 8 | Stockholm | Sweden | 08:43 | 14:48 | 6 h 05 min |
| 9 | Gothenburg | Sweden | 08:54 | 15:26 | 6 h 32 min |
| 10 | Riga | Latvia | 09:00 | 15:43 | 6 h 43 min |
| 11 | Edinburgh | United Kingdom | 08:42 | 15:40 | 6 h 58 min |
| 12 | Glasgow | United Kingdom | 08:46 | 15:44 | 6 h 59 min |
| 13 | Copenhagen | Denmark | 08:37 | 15:38 | 7 h 01 min |
| 14 | Vilnius | Lithuania | 08:40 | 15:54 | 7 h 14 min |
| 15 | Belfast | United Kingdom | 08:44 | 15:59 | 7 h 15 min |
| 16 | York | United Kingdom | 08:21 | 15:44 | 7 h 23 min |
| 17 | Hamburg | Germany | 08:34 | 16:02 | 7 h 28 min |
| 18 | Manchester | United Kingdom | 08:23 | 15:51 | 7 h 28 min |
| 19 | Liverpool | United Kingdom | 08:25 | 15:55 | 7 h 29 min |
| 20 | Dublin | Ireland | 08:38 | 16:08 | 7 h 30 min |
Methodology
- Places: the 294 destinations of the AMZBooking travel guides, each at the centre point (latitude and longitude) and in the IANA time zone recorded with its guide.
- Sun times: sunrise and sunset from the NOAA solar-position equations (after Meeus), with the sun’s upper edge on a sea-level horizon (−0.833° for refraction and the solar disc), on 21 December 2026; local clock times from the UTC offsets of tzdb 2026e.
- Daylight: the time from sunrise to sunset. “No sunrise” means the sun stays below the horizon all day (polar night); “sun up all day” means it never sets (midnight sun).
- Seasonal change: the same calculation on 21 June 2026.
Limitations
- One point stands for each destination: across a large city, island or region, sunrise and sunset differ by a few minutes, and mountains or tall buildings can hide a low winter sun for longer.
- A clear sky and a flat sea-level horizon are assumed; the weather is not.
- Twilight is not counted as daylight. At high latitudes it adds hours of usable light before sunrise and after sunset.
- Times are accurate to about a minute and change by seconds from one year to the next.
Download the data
Every row behind this analysis (294 rows), as CSV. Derived from the public-domain datasets listed below; please cite AMZBooking Research when you use it.
Sources & methodology
AMZBooking travel guide destinations
AMZBooking editorial team · AMZBooking · retrieved
AMZBooking · AMZBooking · retrieved
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (tz project) · Public Domain · retrieved
AMZBooking · AMZBooking · retrieved
Distances are great-circle between airport reference points, not flight distances or times. How we calculate · Report an error
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