Where to watch
Choosing a spot for this eclipse is a three-way trade: how long totality lasts, how likely the sky is to be clear, and how high the Sun is — because a Sun sitting 4° above the horizon can be hidden by a low ridge, a building or a bank of sea fog that would not matter at all at midday.
The best compromises
Ranked by totality length, weighted by the historical chance of clear sky and penalised where the Sun is so low that terrain becomes a problem.
LeónCastile and León, Spain
PalenciaCastile and León, Spain
Close to the centre line with some of the clearest August skies on the route.
BurgosCastile and León, Spain
ValladolidCastile and León, Spain
Everywhere in the path
| Place | Totality begins | Lasts | Sun height | Looking | Usually clear |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grundarfjörður Iceland | 17:45:59 local | 1m 52s | 25.0° | WSW | 30% |
| Oviedo Spain | 20:27:00 local | 1m 48s | 10.2° | W | 44% |
| Gijón Spain | 20:26:43 local | 1m 45s | 10.1° | W | 42% |
| León Spain | 20:28:15 local | 1m 45s | 9.6° | WNW | 70% |
| Burgos Spain | 20:28:20 local | 1m 44s | 8.2° | WNW | 72% |
| Palencia Spain | 20:29:03 local | 1m 42s | 8.6° | WNW | 76% |
| Soria Spain | 20:29:01 local | 1m 42s | 7.1° | WNW | 73% |
| Palma de Mallorca Spain | 20:31:00 local | 1m 36s | 2.4° | WNW | 84% |
| Teruel Spain | 20:30:59 local | 1m 34s | 5.4° | WNW | 78% |
| Castellón de la Plana Spain | 20:31:14 local | 1m 33s | 4.4° | WNW | 80% |
| Ísafjörður Iceland | 17:44:01 local | 1m 32s | 24.8° | WSW | 29% |
| Stykkishólmur Iceland | 17:46:01 local | 1m 29s | 24.7° | WSW | 32% |
| Valladolid Spain | 20:29:47 local | 1m 28s | 8.6° | WNW | 76% |
| Zaragoza Spain | 20:28:57 local | 1m 24s | 5.9° | WNW | 80% |
| Logroño Spain | 20:28:04 local | 1m 21s | 7.4° | WNW | 70% |
| A Coruña Spain | 20:27:37 local | 1m 14s | 12.0° | W | 45% |
| Maó (Menorca) Spain | 20:30:11 local | 1m 10s | 1.5° | WNW | 83% |
| Santander Spain | 20:26:51 local | 1m 03s | 8.8° | WNW | 45% |
| Ibiza Spain | 20:32:40 local | 1m 03s | 2.8° | WNW | 85% |
| Reykjavík Iceland | 17:48:11 local | 1m 01s | 24.5° | WSW | 28% |
| Valencia Spain | 20:32:25 local | 59s | 4.4° | WNW | 79% |
| Bilbao Spain | 20:27:17 local | 32s | 8.2° | WNW | 48% |
| Santiago de Compostela Spain | — | — | 11.8° | W | 46% |
| Viana do Castelo Portugal | — | — | 11.5° | W | 55% |
Find a spot with a clear western horizon
Everything above is about which town to be in. This is about where to stand once you are there — which matters enormously when the Sun is a couple of degrees up, because a low ridge or a line of trees to the west takes the whole event away. Pick a starting point and this looks for places nearby that you can drive to, then checks the terrain between each one and the point on the horizon where the Sun will actually be.
1 · Where are you starting from?
Place search by Open-Meteo, using GeoNames data.
2 · How far are you willing to drive?
From here the Sun will be -0.8° above the horizon at the best moment (20:43 local), bearing 293° — WNW. Anything on the skyline higher than that hides it.
Viewing spots from OpenStreetMap contributors via Overpass. Ground heights from Open-Meteo (Copernicus DEM). Map links open Google Maps.
How to read the Sun's height
Along the Spanish leg the Sun drops from about 12° in Galicia to barely 2° over Menorca. As a rule of thumb, your fist at arm's length covers about 10° of sky, so in Valencia the eclipsed Sun will be less than half a fist above the horizon. That has practical consequences:
- Scout the western horizon in daylight first. A hill 5 km away that rises 400 m blocks everything below about 4.5°.
- Haze thickens enormously near the horizon. The corona will look dimmer and redder than the photographs you have seen from high-Sun eclipses.
- On the other hand, a low Sun makes for extraordinary photographs, with the eclipsed Sun and a landscape in the same frame — something you cannot do when it is overhead.
- The Sun sets shortly after totality in the east of Spain, so if cloud is on the western horizon there is no waiting it out.
What the rest of Europe gets
Outside the path everyone still sees a partial eclipse — and in much of western Europe a very deep one. It will not go dark, and it is never safe to look at without a filter, but a 90 percent eclipse through eclipse glasses is a genuinely striking sight.
| City | Sun covered | Magnitude | Maximum at | Sun height |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reykjanesbær Iceland | 100.0% | 1.005 | 17:48 local | 24.8° |
| Madrid Spain sets during | 100.0% | 0.999 | 20:32 local | 7.2° |
| Barcelona Spain sets during | 99.8% | 0.997 | 20:29 local | 3.7° |
| Porto Portugal | 98.2% | 0.980 | 19:31 local | 11.1° |
| Bordeaux France sets during | 97.5% | 0.975 | 20:24 local | 7.4° |
| Marseille France sets during | 96.3% | 0.965 | 20:25 local | 2.7° |
| Lisbon Portugal | 94.4% | 0.949 | 19:36 local | 10.2° |
| Dublin Ireland | 94.0% | 0.945 | 19:10 local | 14.7° |
| Milan Italy sets during | 92.3% | 0.933 | 20:20 local | 1.6° |
| Paris France | 92.1% | 0.931 | 20:17 local | 7.6° |
| London United Kingdom | 91.4% | 0.925 | 19:13 local | 10.3° |
| Edinburgh United Kingdom | 90.7% | 0.919 | 19:05 local | 13.9° |
| Zurich Switzerland sets during | 90.6% | 0.919 | 20:17 local | 3.1° |
| Brussels Belgium | 89.5% | 0.910 | 20:13 local | 7.4° |
| Munich Germany sets during | 88.8% | 0.905 | 20:15 local | 1.8° |
| Amsterdam Netherlands | 88.2% | 0.900 | 20:10 local | 7.9° |
| Vienna Austria sets during | 87.3% | 0.894 | 20:13 local | -0.8° |
| Casablanca Morocco sets during | 86.9% | 0.890 | 19:43 local | 6.4° |
| Prague Czechia sets during | 86.2% | 0.885 | 20:11 local | 1.4° |
| Berlin Germany sets during | 84.8% | 0.874 | 20:08 local | 3.3° |
| Copenhagen Denmark sets during | 83.5% | 0.863 | 20:03 local | 5.5° |
| Warsaw Poland sets during | 83.2% | 0.861 | 20:05 local | -0.7° |
| Oslo Norway | 83.0% | 0.860 | 19:56 local | 8.5° |
| Stockholm Sweden sets during | 81.0% | 0.844 | 19:56 local | 4.9° |
| Nuuk Greenland | 78.9% | 0.826 | 16:35 local | 36.2° |
| Rome Italy sets during | 76.6% | 0.809 | 20:14 local | -0.8° |
| New York United States | 9.4% | 0.186 | 13:54 local | 61.6° |
| Bucharest Romania sets during | 0.4% | 0.021 | 20:25 local | -0.8° |
Figures are for the deepest moment that is actually above the horizon. This eclipse happens around sunset over much of Europe, and further east it finishes after the Sun has gone: Bucharest, for instance, reaches 90% on paper but sees barely a nibble before sunset, so the geometric maximum would be badly misleading. "Sun covered" is the fraction of the Sun's area hidden, which is what governs how much the light drops. "Magnitude" is the fraction of its diameter covered — the figure usually quoted, and always the larger of the two. Times are computed for the city centre; move a few kilometres and they shift by a few seconds.