Sunrise & sunset times in Cologne

Sun and moon in Cologne

For photographers, gardeners, runners and anyone chasing good light, the daily sun and moon schedule for Cologne 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 Cologne. Every value is calculated in the browser for the date you pick and shown in the local time of Cologne, Germany. Cologne sits at roughly 50.94 degrees north, in the northern hemisphere, so it sees a wide seasonal swing between long summer days and short winter afternoons, so sunrise and sunset move dramatically across the year. Because the length of the day changes with the seasons, the exact sunrise and sunset in Cologne 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 Cologne. 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 Cologne, Germany for any day of the year.

What time is sunset in Cologne today?

The sun sets in Cologne at 19:08 today, Friday, 2 October 2026, in Cologne's own local time. The warm light starts well before that: evening golden hour opens at 18:24, giving 44 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 33 minutes later at 19:40, and the sky is properly dark at 20:58, 1h 50m after sunset.

Tomorrow the sun sets at 19:05 in Cologne. That is 2 minutes 13 seconds earlier than today. Over the coming week sunset moves 15 minutes 25 seconds earlier.

Planning around the light? See golden hour in Cologne.

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

Cologne gets 11h 34m of daylight today, from sunrise to sunset. Tomorrow will be 3 minutes 50 seconds shorter. Over the next seven days Cologne loses 26 minutes 43 seconds of daylight.

That pace is not constant. In Cologne the day length changes fastest around March, near the equinox, when it moves by about 3 minutes 54 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 Cologne?

The earliest sunset of 2026 in Cologne falls on 12 December at 16:25, 9 days before the December solstice, and the latest on 25 June at 21:50.

Sunrise runs on its own schedule: earliest on 17 June at 05:17, latest on 30 December at 08:35, 9 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.

These are wall-clock times, so Cologne's daylight saving change is part of the picture: an hour moved by the clocks counts the same as an hour moved by the Earth.

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

How long does twilight last in Cologne?

First light in Cologne arrives 33 minutes before sunrise today, at 07:01. After sunset the light hangs on for another 33 minutes, until 19:40. That evening stretch is not the same all year in Cologne: it runs from 33 minutes at its shortest, in September, to 47 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.

For 53 nights of 2026, the longest stretch running from 26 May to 17 July, the sky over Cologne never gets fully dark. The sun stays within 18 degrees of the horizon all night, so astronomical twilight lasts straight through to dawn and the faintest stars never come out.

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

How high does the sun get in Cologne?

At midday on the June solstice the sun stands 62.5 degrees above the horizon in Cologne. On the December solstice it climbs only 15.7 degrees. A midday sun that low throws a shadow about 3.6 times the height of whatever casts it, so even at noon in midwinter the shadows in Cologne are long ones.

Frequently asked questions about Cologne

Data and methodology: every time on this page is computed from Cologne's coordinates with SunCalc, an open source astronomy library, not estimated or looked up from a table. Coordinates 50.94, 6.96, time zone Europe/Berlin. 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 Cologne. Sunrise and sunset shift as you move east, west, north or south.

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

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