December Solstice 2026 — exact time

What happens at this instant

The Sun’s apparent longitude crosses 270° and it stands directly over the Tropic of Capricorn (23.4°S) — as far south as it ever gets. This is the shortest day of the year everywhere north of the equator and the longest everywhere south of it — one instant, two opposite seasons. It is a single worldwide moment: the same instant, whatever your clock says locally — which is what the city table below converts.

And a myth to retire: the december solstice is notabout Earth’s distance from the Sun. Perihelion — our closest point of the year — falls just after it, on 3 January 2027 (USNO, Astronomical Applications Department). Tilt makes the seasons; distance is a ~3% sideshow.

Where this time comes from

The instant and the year table are the published minutes of the USNO, Astronomical Applications Department (UT), frozen 2026-07-17. LEV computes each instant independently as a cross-check (Meeus’s standard algorithm): across all 104 published events the two agree within ±91 seconds, and the four 2026 instants were further verified against JPL Horizons (DE441)to ~31 s. The countdown ticks on the computed instant’s seconds. Beyond the early 2030s every published minute — anyone’s — inherits the uncertainty of Earth-rotation (ΔT) predictions and can shift by up to about a minute as the years arrive.