Iceland prepares for total eclipse
28 March 2025
If you are planning to visit Iceland in the second week of August next year, you might find that many places are nearly or fully booked out – and have been for a long time already, in some places even since 2012. The reason is clearly not the attractive 12-degree partly cloudy weather, but because a total solar eclipse will be visible from Iceland's western region on 12 August 2026.
It's not only the tourism industry preparing for a mass wave of travellers. Members of parliament are already now calling for a task force to be set up to manage logistics and mitigate disruptions. The total eclipse will last one minute and ten seconds in the capital, Reykjavik, but two minutes and thirteen seconds in the most western point of Iceland, Látrabjarg.
 | Axel Helgi Ívarsson Total solar eclipses, when the moon fully covers the sun, happen around every 18 months, but are only visible in a tiny part of the Earth due to their narrow path. In addition to Iceland, the totality path of the eclipse will pass over Greenland, Portugal, and the northwestern part of Spain. For Icelanders, it is a moment worth marking on the calendar, as the next total eclipse over Iceland after 2026 will be in 2196, and the last one was in 1954. |
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