Sunrise & sunset times in Riga

Sun and moon in Riga

Landscape and street photographers who plan around the light rely on the daily sun and moon schedule for Riga, Latvia. 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 Riga. Every value is calculated in the browser for the date you pick and shown in the local time of Riga, Latvia. Riga sits at roughly 56.95 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 Riga 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 Riga. 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 Riga, Latvia for any day of the year.

What time is sunset in Riga today?

The sun sets in Riga at 18:55 today, Friday, 2 October 2026, in Riga's own local time. The warm light starts well before that: evening golden hour opens at 18:04, giving 51 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 38 minutes later at 19:33, and the sky is properly dark at 21:03, 2h 8m after sunset.

Tomorrow the sun sets at 18:53 in Riga. That is 2 minutes 42 seconds earlier than today. Over the coming week sunset moves 18 minutes 45 seconds earlier.

Planning around the light? See golden hour in Riga.

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

Riga gets 11h 27m of daylight today, from sunrise to sunset. Tomorrow will be 4 minutes 47 seconds shorter. Over the next seven days Riga loses 33 minutes 24 seconds of daylight.

That pace is not constant. In Riga the day length changes fastest around March, near the equinox, when it moves by about 4 minutes 52 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 Riga?

The earliest sunset of 2026 in Riga falls on 15 December at 15:41, 6 days before the December solstice, and the latest on 23 June at 22:21.

Sunrise runs on its own schedule: earliest on 18 June at 04:28, latest on 28 December at 09:01, 7 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 Riga'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 Riga.

How long does twilight last in Riga?

First light in Riga arrives 38 minutes before sunrise today, at 06:50. After sunset the light hangs on for another 38 minutes, until 19:33. That evening stretch is not the same all year in Riga: it runs from 38 minutes at its shortest, in September, to 1h 8m 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 103 nights of 2026, the longest stretch running from 1 May to 11 August, the sky over Riga 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 53 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 Riga and dusk in Riga.

How high does the sun get in Riga?

At midday on the June solstice the sun stands 56.5 degrees above the horizon in Riga. On the December solstice it climbs only 9.7 degrees. A midday sun that low throws a shadow about 5.8 times the height of whatever casts it, so even at noon in midwinter the shadows in Riga are long ones.

Frequently asked questions about Riga

Data and methodology: every time on this page is computed from Riga's coordinates with SunCalc, an open source astronomy library, not estimated or looked up from a table. Coordinates 56.95, 24.11, time zone Europe/Riga. 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 Riga. 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 Riga and everywhere else.

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