Sunrise & sunset times in Cusco

Sun and moon in Cusco

If you are scheduling a rooftop dinner or an early hike, the daily sun and moon schedule for Cusco 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 Cusco. Every value is calculated in the browser for the date you pick and shown in the local time of Cusco, Peru. Cusco sits at roughly 13.53 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 Cusco 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 Cusco. 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 Cusco, Peru for any day of the year.

What time is sunset in Cusco today?

The sun sets in Cusco at 17:44 (just after midnight) today, Thursday, 1 October 2026, in Cusco's own local time. The warm light starts well before that: evening golden hour opens at 17:16, giving 28 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 21 minutes later at 18:05, and the sky is properly dark at 18:55, 1h 11m after sunset.

Tomorrow the sun sets at 17:44 in Cusco. To the minute, that is the same time as today. Over the coming week sunset barely moves at all, by under a minute in total.

Planning around the light? See golden hour in Cusco.

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

Cusco gets 12h 13m of daylight today, from sunrise to sunset. Tomorrow will be 45 seconds longer. Over the next seven days Cusco gains 5 minutes 16 seconds of daylight.

That pace is not constant. In Cusco the day length changes fastest around March, near the equinox, when it moves by about 46 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 Cusco?

The earliest sunset of 2026 in Cusco falls on 31 May at 17:27, 21 days before the June solstice, and the latest on 21 January at 18:22.

Sunrise runs on its own schedule: earliest on 20 November at 05:10, latest on 9 July at 06:12, 18 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.

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

How long does twilight last in Cusco?

First light in Cusco arrives 21 minutes before sunrise today, at 05:08. After sunset the light hangs on for another 21 minutes, until 18:05. That evening stretch is not the same all year in Cusco: it runs from 21 minutes at its shortest, in March, to 23 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.

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

How high does the sun get in Cusco?

At midday on the December solstice the sun stands 80.1 degrees above the horizon in Cusco. On the June solstice it climbs only 53.0 degrees. The midday sun stays high enough all year that noon shadows in Cusco are always shorter than the object casting them, about 0.75 times their height at the lowest point of the year.

Twice a year, on 12 February and 29 October, the midday sun over Cusco comes within half a degree of straight overhead, reaching 89.99 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 Cusco

Data and methodology: every time on this page is computed from Cusco's coordinates with SunCalc, an open source astronomy library, not estimated or looked up from a table. Coordinates -13.53, -71.97, time zone America/Lima. 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 Cusco. 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 Cusco and everywhere else.

Keep Cusco in your calendar

Subscribe to a live feed of Cusco'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.