Sunrise & sunset times in Cancun

Sun and moon in Cancun

Whether you are planning a sunrise photo walk or timing an evening run, the daily sun and moon schedule for Cancun is easy to check here. 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 Cancun. Every value is calculated in the browser for the date you pick and shown in the local time of Cancun, Mexico. Cancun sits at roughly 21.16 degrees north, in the northern 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 Cancun 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 Cancun. 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 Cancun, Mexico for any day of the year.

What time is sunset in Cancun today?

The sun sets in Cancun at 18:34 (just after midnight) today, Thursday, 1 October 2026, in Cancun's own local time. The warm light starts well before that: evening golden hour opens at 18:04, 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 18:56, and the sky is properly dark at 19:47, 1h 14m after sunset.

Tomorrow the sun sets at 18:34 in Cancun. That is 55 seconds earlier than today. Over the coming week sunset moves 6 minutes 16 seconds earlier.

Planning around the light? See golden hour in Cancun.

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

Cancun gets 11h 56m of daylight today, from sunrise to sunset. Tomorrow will be 1 minute 12 seconds shorter. Over the next seven days Cancun loses 8 minutes 20 seconds of daylight.

That pace is not constant. In Cancun the day length changes fastest around March, near the equinox, when it moves by about 1 minute 13 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 Cancun?

The earliest sunset of 2026 in Cancun falls on 26 November at 18:04, 25 days before the December solstice, and the latest on 4 July at 19:33.

Sunrise runs on its own schedule: earliest on 6 June at 06:04, latest on 16 January at 07:27, 26 days after the December 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.

For the longest and shortest day themselves, see day length in Cancun.

How long does twilight last in Cancun?

First light in Cancun arrives 22 minutes before sunrise today, at 06:16. After sunset the light hangs on for another 22 minutes, until 18:56. That evening stretch is not the same all year in Cancun: it runs from 22 minutes at its shortest, in September, to 25 minutes at its longest, in June. 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.

Full three-band twilight tables: dawn in Cancun and dusk in Cancun.

How high does the sun get in Cancun?

At midday on the June solstice the sun stands 87.7 degrees above the horizon in Cancun. On the December solstice it climbs only 45.4 degrees. The midday sun stays high enough all year that noon shadows in Cancun are always shorter than the object casting them, about 0.99 times their height at the lowest point of the year.

Twice a year, on 26 May and 17 July, the midday sun over Cancun comes within half a degree of straight overhead, reaching 89.94 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 Cancun

Data and methodology: every time on this page is computed from Cancun's coordinates with SunCalc, an open source astronomy library, not estimated or looked up from a table. Coordinates 21.16, -86.85, time zone America/Cancun. 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.

Nearby cities

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

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Understand the light

Plain-English guides to the moments that shape the day in Cancun and everywhere else.

Keep Cancun in your calendar

Subscribe to a live feed of Cancun's sunrise and sunset in your own calendar app, so today's light is always a glance away. It updates by itself, with no account.