Full moon names: every full moon of the year and when to see it
Updated October 2026.
Each full moon has a traditional name, one for each month: Wolf, Snow, Worm, Pink, Flower, Strawberry, Buck, Sturgeon, Harvest or Corn, Hunter's, Beaver and Cold. Most lists follow the Old Farmer's Almanac. November 2026 brings the Beaver Moon, full at 9:53 am Eastern on November 24. Look for it the evening before, November 23.
Below is every full moon from November 2026 through December 2027, with the evening to look from the US and Canada. The times are the U.S. Naval Observatory's moon phase data, and our own calculation from NASA JPL's DE421 ephemeris agrees to within a minute.
When is the next full moon?
A full moon is a single moment: the instant the Moon sits opposite the Sun. It often falls in daylight or in the small hours, so the last columns give the evening when the Moon rises, round and bright, near sunset. That evening is the same in all four mainland time zones.
| Date | Name | Eastern | Pacific (US) | Evening to look | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 24, 2026 | Beaver Moon | 9:53 am | 6:53 am | Mon, Nov 23 | Supermoon. Nov 24 looks as full |
| Dec 23, 2026 | Cold Moon | 8:28 pm | 5:28 pm | Wed, Dec 23 | Supermoon, the closest full moon in this table |
| Jan 22, 2027 | Wolf Moon | 7:17 am | 4:17 am | Thu, Jan 21 | Supermoon |
| Feb 20, 2027 | Snow Moon | 6:23 pm | 3:23 pm | Sat, Feb 20 | Supermoon. Penumbral eclipse at moonrise, East and Central |
| Mar 22, 2027 | Worm Moon | 6:44 am | 3:44 am | Sun, Mar 21 | |
| Apr 20, 2027 | Pink Moon | 6:27 pm | 3:27 pm | Tue, Apr 20 | |
| May 20, 2027 | Flower Moon | 6:59 am | 3:59 am | Wed, May 19 | Seasonal Blue Moon |
| Jun 18, 2027 | Strawberry Moon | 8:44 pm | 5:44 pm | Fri, Jun 18 | |
| Jul 18, 2027 | Buck Moon | 11:45 am | 8:45 am | Sat, Jul 17 | The farthest full moon in this table. Jul 18 looks as full |
| Aug 17, 2027 | Sturgeon Moon | 3:29 am | 12:29 am | Mon, Aug 16 | Penumbral eclipse, too faint to see |
| Sep 15, 2027 | Harvest Moon | 7:03 pm | 4:03 pm | Wed, Sep 15 | The full moon nearest the September equinox |
| Oct 15, 2027 | Hunter's Moon | 9:47 am | 6:47 am | Thu, Oct 14 | Oct 15 looks as full |
| Nov 13, 2027 | Beaver Moon | 10:26 pm | 7:26 pm | Sat, Nov 13 | |
| Dec 13, 2027 | Cold Moon | 11:09 am | 8:09 am | Sun, Dec 12 | Dec 13 looks as full |
Times include daylight saving time where it applies. Central time is one hour behind Eastern, and Mountain time two. Most of British Columbia now keeps summer time all year, under a 2026 provincial change, so from November to mid-March, B.C. clocks read an hour later than the US Pacific column. The local date and the evening to look stay the same from coast to coast for every full moon here. Lists set to Greenwich time put the December 2026 and June 2027 full moons a day later, on December 24 and June 19, which is one reason calendars seem to disagree.
What does each full moon name mean?
Main names and reasons are from the Old Farmer's Almanac. The other names are a few of the many it lists, with the nation it gives for each.
| Month | Name | Why | Other names |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | Wolf Moon | Wolves were often heard howling at this time of year | Spirit Moon (Ojibwe), Hard Moon (Dakota) |
| February | Snow Moon | More snow commonly falls in February than in any other winter month | Bear Moon (Ojibwe), Hungry Moon (Cherokee) |
| March | Worm Moon | Earthworms appear as the soil warms | Sugar Moon (Ojibwe), Goose Moon (Algonquin, Cree) |
| April | Pink Moon | The bloom of moss pink, a wild phlox | Breaking Ice Moon (Algonquin), Frog Moon (Cree) |
| May | Flower Moon | Flowers in abundance | Planting Moon (Dakota, Lakota), Budding Moon (Cree) |
| June | Strawberry Moon | Ripe strawberries ready to gather | Berries Ripen Moon (Haida), Hatching Moon (Cree) |
| July | Buck Moon | Bucks' antlers are in full growth | Thunder Moon (Western Abenaki), Raspberry Moon (Algonquin, Ojibwe) |
| August | Sturgeon Moon | Sturgeon in the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain were most readily caught | Corn Moon (Algonquin, Ojibwe), Ricing Moon (Anishinaabe) |
| September | Harvest Moon or Corn Moon | Corn was ready to harvest | Falling Leaves Moon (Ojibwe), Moon of Brown Leaves (Lakota) |
| October | Hunter's Moon | Game is fattened up for winter | Freezing Moon (Ojibwe), Migrating Moon (Cree) |
| November | Beaver Moon | Beavers finish their winter preparations and retreat into their lodges | Frost Moon (Cree, Assiniboine), Whitefish Moon (Algonquin) |
| December | Cold Moon | Winter's cold takes hold and the nights grow long | Long Night Moon (Mohican), Moon of the Popping Trees (Oglala) |
Where do the full moon names come from?
The Old Farmer's Almanac says its names come from Native American, Colonial American and other traditional North American sources. Colonial Americans adopted some Native American names, and some, like the Wolf Moon, are thought to have English roots brought over by European settlers. Many are English interpretations of words in Native American languages, and each name was usually used for the whole lunar month, not just the night of the full moon.
The names were never one shared system. The almanac notes that they varied between tribes and regions, and its lists show it. "Snow Moon" is February in the main list, but the almanac gives it as a December name for the Haida and the Cherokee. "Corn Moon" is an Algonquin and Ojibwe name for August, and also the usual September name in years when the Harvest Moon falls in October. When two calendars give different names for one full moon, both can be quoting a real tradition. This page uses the almanac's main list, the one most North American calendars follow.
Why does the Moon look full the night before?
Because the Moon changes slowly. Take the Beaver Moon: it is full at 9:53 am Eastern on November 24, 2026, after the Moon has set in the East and as it sets on the West Coast. The evening before, it rises in New York at 3:29 pm, already 98.9 percent lit, and by 10 pm it is 99.4 percent lit. That is the Moon to go out for.
The rule of thumb: if the full moon falls in the morning, look the evening before. If it falls in the afternoon or evening, look that evening. When it falls near midday, the two evenings are almost identical. The July 2026 Buck Moon was a good example, full at 10:36 am Eastern on July 29 and best seen the night of July 28.
Which full moons are supermoons?
The Moon's orbit is an oval, so its distance changes through the month. NASA describes a supermoon as a full moon that typically comes within at least 90 percent of perigee, the Moon's closest point to Earth. By that measure, four full moons in this table qualify: November 2026, December 2026, January 2027 and February 2027.
The December 23, 2026 Cold Moon is the closest, 356,738 km from Earth, center to center. The July 2027 Buck Moon is the farthest, at 405,979 km. Side by side, the December Moon would look about 14 percent wider, the figure NASA gives for the Moon at its closest against its farthest, and NASA notes that is hard to detect by eye.
There is no single official cutoff, so lists can differ at the edges. The December 2027 Cold Moon falls just outside the 90 percent line, and a list that measures a little differently may count it.
What is the Harvest Moon, and why isn't it always in September?
The Harvest Moon is the full moon nearest the September equinox. In 2027 the equinox is September 23, so the Harvest Moon is September 15, and October 15 is the Hunter's Moon. The almanac says the Harvest Moon falls in September most years and in October about every three years. In those years, September's full moon is called the Corn Moon.
What makes it special is moonrise. Around the September 2027 full moon, the Moon rises only about 21 minutes later each evening from New York. Around the March full moon, the gap is more than an hour. So for several evenings in a row, a nearly full Moon comes up close to sunset.
Is there a Blue Moon in 2027?
Not the monthly kind. No calendar month from November 2026 through December 2027 has two full moons, in any North American time zone. The most recent was May 31, 2026, the second full moon of that May.
By the older rule, there is one. The seasonal Blue Moon is the third full moon in a season that has four, and spring 2027 has four: March 22, April 20, May 20 and June 18. That makes the May 20 Flower Moon a seasonal Blue Moon. The "second full moon in a month" meaning came from a 1946 misreading of that rule, as Sky & Telescope explains. Calendars that follow the seasonal rule can shift names by a month, one reason lists disagree.
Are there lunar eclipses in 2027?
Three, and all are penumbral: the Moon passes only through the pale outer part of Earth's shadow. NASA's eclipse catalog notes that a penumbral eclipse can't be seen at all unless its magnitude is greater than about 0.6.
- February 20, with the Snow Moon. A deep one, penumbral magnitude 0.93, greatest at 6:13 pm Eastern and over by 8:13 pm Eastern (7:13 pm Central, 6:13 pm Mountain). In the East and Central zones the Moon rises already in the shadow: look low in the east at dusk for a soft shading on one edge. Mountain time catches the last half hour, very low. On the Pacific coast it ends before moonrise.
- July 18, with the Buck Moon. The Moon barely grazes the shadow, in North American daytime. Nothing to see.
- August 17, with the Sturgeon Moon. The Moon is well up across North America (greatest at 3:13 am Eastern, 12:13 am Pacific), but at magnitude 0.55 the shading is too faint to notice.
More to watch under a bright Moon
A full Moon washes out faint things. The meteor shower calendar rates every peak for moonlight: the December 2027 Geminids, for one, peak two nights after that month's full moon. In its season, the days around each new moon are the time for the Milky Way's core.
Some full moons end up attached to a date: a wedding under the Strawberry Moon, a birthday on a supermoon. The Moon comes back every month. The planets don't. The Date Print shows the Sun with the eight planets and Pluto where they stood on any date you choose, calculated from NASA JPL's published orbital data. It doesn't show the Moon, but it keeps the planets of that night. You can watch the planets move to any date for free, read more about the solar system on the day you were born, or create your print for a date of your own.
