Seasons and day length in Madrid
The curve shows the day length in Madrid day by day, with the turning points of the year marked.
Longest day
15 h 4 min
21 June 2026
Shortest day
9 h 17 min
21 December 2026
- Difference between longest and shortest5 h 47 min
- March equinoxThe sun stands directly over the equator.20 March 2026 at 3:38pm
- June solsticeThe sun stands furthest from the equator.21 June 2026 at 10:21am
- September equinoxThe sun stands directly over the equator.23 September 2026 at 2:10am
- December solsticeThe sun stands furthest from the equator.21 December 2026 at 9:49pm
The place lies on the northern hemisphere, so June gives the longest day and December the shortest.
Midnight sun and polar night
The place lies too far from the poles. The sun rises and sets every day of the year.
How it works
The seasons come from the tilt of the earth’s axis, a little over 23 degrees against the plane of its orbit, not from any change in distance to the sun. The earth is in fact closest to the sun in early January, in the middle of the northern winter.
At the equinoxes the sun stands directly over the equator and the day is roughly equal everywhere on earth. At the solstices it stands furthest north or south, over the tropics.
The curve is steepest around the equinoxes and flattest around the solstices. That is why the days grow fastest in March and September, by several minutes a day at northern latitudes, while the difference is barely noticeable in the weeks around midsummer.
The further north or south the place lies, the deeper the curve. At the equator the day is twelve hours all year, and north of the Arctic Circle the curve flattens completely during the midnight sun and the polar night.
The turning points fall at a precise moment rather than on a whole day, and that moment shifts by a few hours between years because the year is not a whole number of days. The leap day corrects for it.
These dates are astronomical and need not coincide with the meteorological seasons, which are based on temperature and begin on the first of a month.