Best time to see the northern lights

Best time of year: September to March

You can only see the aurora when the sky is dark, so the season is the dark half of the year — roughly September to March in the northern hemisphere (and March to September in the south). In high-summer at far-northern latitudes the sky never gets dark enough at all — the midnight sun makes the aurora invisible no matter how strong it is. Our forecast accounts for this automatically.

Best months: around the equinoxes

Geomagnetic activity tends to peak around the March and September equinoxes — the so-called Russell–McPherron effect makes the Earth's magnetic field link up with the solar wind more easily. Pair that with long dark nights and the sweet spots are often late September–October and February–March.

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Best time of night: around local midnight

On any given night, the aurora is usually most active in the hours either side of local midnight, once the sky is fully dark. That's why our forecast includes an hour-by-hour timeline — it finds tonight's best viewing window for your location, combining darkness, cloud and the moon.

Best place: high latitude, dark skies

The closer you are to the auroral oval, the less geomagnetic activity you need. Under-the-oval hubs like Tromsø, Fairbanks and Abisko see the lights on most clear, dark nights; mid-latitude cities need a storm. See exactly where the aurora is visible by latitude, how much each place needs on the city forecast pages, or browse the best aurora destinations.

What about the solar cycle?

The Sun runs an ~11-year cycle, and Solar Cycle 25 reached its maximum in late 2024. It's now in the active declining phase — historically the years that produce the strongest geomagnetic storms, with the aurora pushed much further south than normal. That keeps the mid-2020s an exceptional window, with elevated activity expected for a few more years before fading toward the next minimum around 2030.

The one thing that decides every night: clouds

Even a brilliant display is invisible through an overcast sky — clouds are the most common reason people miss the aurora. A strong forecast plus a clear, dark, moonless sky is the magic combination. The live forecast checks all of it for you.