Sunrise & sunset times in Bulawayo

Sun and moon in Bulawayo

Landscape and street photographers who plan around the light rely on the daily sun and moon schedule for Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. This page shows live sunrise, sunset, solar noon, day length, morning and evening golden hour, blue hour, dawn and dusk, plus the current moon phase and the moonrise and moonset times for Bulawayo. Every value is calculated in the browser for the date you pick and shown in the local time of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Bulawayo sits at roughly 20.15 degrees south, in the southern hemisphere, so it sees very little seasonal change, with day length staying close to twelve hours all year and a short, fast twilight after sunset. Because the length of the day changes with the seasons, the exact sunrise and sunset in Bulawayo shift from week to week. Pick any date with the date picker to see how the light will fall on a specific day, which is handy for planning a shoot, an event, a wedding, a flight or simply the best moment to catch the last warm light of the evening. Golden hour, that soft warm window near sunrise and sunset, is the favourite of photographers in Bulawayo. Blue hour, the cooler stretch just before sunrise and just after sunset, is ideal for cityscapes and long exposures. Combined with the moon phase and moon times, this gives you a complete picture of natural light over Bulawayo, Zimbabwe for any day of the year.

What time is sunset in Bulawayo today?

The sun sets in Bulawayo at 18:04 today, Friday, 2 October 2026, in Bulawayo's own local time. The warm light starts well before that: evening golden hour opens at 17:34, giving 29 minutes of low golden light before the sun reaches the horizon. Sunset is not the end of the light either. Last light, the moment usable daylight ends at civil dusk, follows 22 minutes later at 18:26, and the sky is properly dark at 19:17, 1h 14m after sunset.

Tomorrow the sun sets at 18:04 in Bulawayo. To the minute, that is the same time as today. Over the coming week sunset moves 1 minute 56 seconds later.

Is the day getting longer or shorter in Bulawayo right now?

Bulawayo gets 12h 18m of daylight today, from sunrise to sunset. Tomorrow will be 1 minute 9 seconds longer. Over the next seven days Bulawayo gains 8 minutes of daylight.

That pace is not constant. In Bulawayo the day length changes fastest around March, near the equinox, when it moves by about 1 minute 10 seconds per day, and it slows almost to a stop at the solstices in June and December. The word solstice means exactly that: the sun standing still.

When are the earliest and latest sunrise and sunset in Bulawayo?

The earliest sunset of 2026 in Bulawayo falls on 5 June at 17:32, 16 days before the June solstice, and the latest on 16 January at 18:51.

Sunrise runs on its own schedule: earliest on 27 November at 05:16, latest on 5 July at 06:41, 14 days after the June solstice. The four dates in the table below do not line up with the solstices, and they are not supposed to. Earth's orbit is slightly elliptical and its axis is tilted, so the sun runs a few minutes fast or slow against clock time through the year. That offset, the equation of time, is what pushes the earliest sunset ahead of the shortest day and the latest sunrise behind it.

How long does twilight last in Bulawayo?

First light in Bulawayo arrives 22 minutes before sunrise today, at 05:24. After sunset the light hangs on for another 22 minutes, until 18:26. That evening stretch is not the same all year in Bulawayo: it runs from 22 minutes at its shortest, in March, to 25 minutes at its longest, in December. The lower the angle at which the sun crosses the horizon, the longer twilight lasts, which is why dusk is a slow affair at high latitudes and abrupt near the equator.

How high does the sun get in Bulawayo?

At midday on the December solstice the sun stands 86.7 degrees above the horizon in Bulawayo. On the June solstice it climbs only 46.4 degrees. The midday sun stays high enough all year that noon shadows in Bulawayo are always shorter than the object casting them, about 0.95 times their height at the lowest point of the year.

Twice a year, on 20 January and 22 November, the midday sun over Bulawayo comes within half a degree of straight overhead, reaching 89.98 degrees at its highest. On those days an upright post casts almost no shadow at solar noon, which is why they are sometimes called zero shadow days. It can only happen between the tropics, where the sun passes directly over a place at all.

Frequently asked questions about Bulawayo

Data and methodology: every time on this page is computed from Bulawayo's coordinates with SunCalc, an open source astronomy library, not estimated or looked up from a table. Coordinates -20.15, 28.58, time zone Africa/Harare. Accurate to about a minute for a flat, unobstructed horizon; terrain, tall buildings and atmospheric conditions can shift the moment the sun is actually visible by a few minutes. Full method on methodology.

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Sun and moon times for places close to Bulawayo. Sunrise and sunset shift as you move east, west, north or south.

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