Sunrise & sunset times in Helsinki

Sun and moon in Helsinki

If you are scheduling a rooftop dinner or an early hike, the daily sun and moon schedule for Helsinki 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 Helsinki. Every value is calculated in the browser for the date you pick and shown in the local time of Helsinki, Finland. Helsinki sits at roughly 60.17 degrees north, in the northern hemisphere, so it sees an enormous seasonal swing, with long luminous summer evenings that barely darken and short winter days where the sun sits low for only a few hours. Because the length of the day changes with the seasons, the exact sunrise and sunset in Helsinki 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 Helsinki. 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 Helsinki, Finland for any day of the year.

What time is sunset in Helsinki today?

The sun sets in Helsinki at 18:50 today, Friday, 2 October 2026, in Helsinki's own local time. The warm light starts well before that: evening golden hour opens at 17:53, giving 56 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 42 minutes later at 19:31, and the sky is properly dark at 21:11, 2h 21m after sunset.

Tomorrow the sun sets at 18:46 in Helsinki. That is 3 minutes 1 second earlier than today. Over the coming week sunset moves 21 minutes 2 seconds earlier.

Planning around the light? See golden hour in Helsinki.

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

Helsinki gets 11h 22m of daylight today, from sunrise to sunset. Tomorrow will be 5 minutes 26 seconds shorter. Over the next seven days Helsinki loses 37 minutes 59 seconds of daylight.

That pace is not constant. In Helsinki the day length changes fastest around March, near the equinox, when it moves by about 5 minutes 31 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 Helsinki?

The earliest sunset of 2026 in Helsinki falls on 16 December at 15:11, 5 days before the December solstice, and the latest on 23 June at 22:50.

Sunrise runs on its own schedule: earliest on 19 June at 03:53, latest on 27 December at 09:25, 6 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 Helsinki'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 Helsinki.

How long does twilight last in Helsinki?

First light in Helsinki arrives 42 minutes before sunrise today, at 06:46. After sunset the light hangs on for another 42 minutes, until 19:31. That evening stretch is not the same all year in Helsinki: it runs from 42 minutes at its shortest, in September, to 1h 52m 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 123 nights of 2026, the longest stretch running from 21 April to 21 August, the sky over Helsinki 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. On 83 of those nights it does not even reach 12 degrees below the horizon, so the sky holds a pale blue right through the small hours.

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

How high does the sun get in Helsinki?

At midday on the June solstice the sun stands 53.3 degrees above the horizon in Helsinki. On the December solstice it climbs only 6.5 degrees. A midday sun that low throws a shadow about 8.7 times the height of whatever casts it, so even at noon in midwinter the shadows in Helsinki are long ones.

Frequently asked questions about Helsinki

Data and methodology: every time on this page is computed from Helsinki's coordinates with SunCalc, an open source astronomy library, not estimated or looked up from a table. Coordinates 60.17, 24.94, time zone Europe/Helsinki. 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 Helsinki. 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 Helsinki and everywhere else.

Keep Helsinki in your calendar

Subscribe to a live feed of Helsinki'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.