The 2027 Total Solar Eclipse: Path Map, Totality Times, and Trip Planner

On August 2, 2027, the Moon’s shadow will cross southern Spain, North Africa, and the Arabian Peninsula. Near the point of greatest eclipse in Egypt, totality is predicted to last about 6 minutes 23 seconds.

That is the easy part of the plan.

The harder part is choosing one patch of ground where the eclipse is total, the sky has a plausible chance of being clear, and you can arrive before the roads tighten around the path. A famous city, a long duration, or a promising climate map can solve only one part of that problem.

The useful question is not “Where is the best place?” It is: Where do totality, workable access, historical sky conditions, and a credible backup plan overlap for your trip?

Open the 2027 eclipse map

The 2027 eclipse at a glance

Date: Monday, August 2, 2027
Type: Total solar eclipse
Greatest eclipse: About 10:07 UTC
Maximum predicted totality: About 6 minutes 23 seconds
Path width near greatest eclipse: About 258 kilometers, or 160 miles
Totality crosses: Southern Spain; Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt; Saudi Arabia; Yemen; and northeastern Somalia
Partial eclipse reaches: Much of Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia, plus eastern Canada and northern Maine

These figures come from NASA’s 2027 eclipse catalog and NASA’s path table. They describe the event as a whole. Your circumstances depend on your exact coordinates.

The path of totality is a boundary, not a suggestion

A partial solar eclipse and a total solar eclipse are not weaker and stronger versions of the same sight.

During a partial eclipse, some part of the Sun’s bright surface remains visible. You keep your eclipse glasses on. Daylight persists, even when the uncovered sliver looks surprisingly small through a safe viewer.

Inside the path of totality, the Moon briefly covers the Sun’s bright face. The corona appears around the black lunar disk. The light collapses, the horizon changes color, and the ordinary daytime sky becomes something else.

Cross the path limit by a few kilometers, however, and totality disappears. A hotel can advertise an “eclipse view” while sitting outside that boundary. A nearby hill can be inside the path while the town named in your reservation is not. The address matters more than the destination label.

This is why the path map comes first. Open the interactive 2027 path map and search the actual coordinates of the place where you expect to stand. Then look at the predicted duration and the distance from the path edge. Near the edge, small errors in location or access cost most of your totality. Farther inside, the plan gains margin.

Even the plotted edge has uncertainty. NASA says that lunar mountains and valleys can shift a predicted path limit by roughly 1–3 kilometers and change predicted duration by roughly 1–3 seconds. Treat the edge as a band, not a survey line.

Totality times change along the path

The shadow does not arrive everywhere at once. It reaches the Strait of Gibraltar before it crosses Tunisia and Egypt. Duration also grows as the shadow approaches the point of greatest eclipse.

These representative city-center calculations show the scale of the difference. Contact times and durations are rounded to the nearest second in UTC.

Map point	Totality starts	Approximate maximum	Totality ends	Predicted totality
Tangier, Morocco	08:44:35	08:47:00	08:49:25	4 min 50 sec
Tarifa, Spain	08:45:01	08:47:20	08:49:39	4 min 38 sec
Sfax, Tunisia	09:08:40	09:11:29	09:14:20	5 min 40 sec
Luxor, Egypt	10:01:58	10:05:08	10:08:18	6 min 20 sec

All table times are UTC. The sea-level map points are 35.759°N, 5.813°W; 36.014°N, 5.604°W; 34.740°N, 10.761°E; and 25.687°N, 32.640°E, in table order. The calculations use the NASA Besselian elements that drive the planner.

They are examples, not appointments. Move the pin, and the contact times and duration change. Recheck the local civil time closer to the event because governments can change time-zone rules.

An eclipse plan needs more than the moment of maximum. You also need second contact, when totality starts, and third contact, when it ends. The partial phases extend well beyond those two moments. Arriving at the site a few minutes before maximum means arriving late.

Do not let six minutes choose the whole trip

Maximum duration is seductive because it is clean. More totality is genuinely valuable. It is not, however, the only quantity that can fail.

Suppose one site offers several extra seconds but depends on a single road and a same-day transfer. Another offers less totality but gives you two approach routes, shade, water, toilets, and room to move if a low cloud bank forms. The first site wins a duration comparison. The second can be the stronger plan.

Use duration as a constraint, then compare the rest of the trip:

Totality: Make sure the exact site is inside the path with useful margin.
Sky history: Compare cloud patterns at the season and hour of the eclipse.
Mobility: Find realistic routes to the site and at least one alternate area.
Access: Check airports, rail, ferries, border crossings, roads, and local transport.
Site conditions: Plan for horizon, shade, water, toilets, crowds, and permission to enter.
Lodging: Treat a room as a base, not proof of a usable view.

This order prevents a common mistake: booking the trip first, then discovering that the eclipse geometry and the last mile do not fit it.

Historical clouds are useful, but they are not a forecast

No weather forecast can tell us now which field will be clear on August 2, 2027. A forecast becomes useful in the days before the event. Before then, climatology helps compare locations without pretending to know the weather.

The planner’s historical cloud layer uses the public ARCO-ERA5 data store, which repackages ECMWF ERA5 hourly reanalysis data. It covers 1991 through 2020. For each eclipse location, the build samples the local eclipse hour across a 15-date window centered on August 2. That produces 450 expected samples per map cell: 30 years multiplied by 15 nearby calendar dates.

Two views answer different questions:

Historical clear-sky frequency shows how often total cloud cover was 10 percent or less among valid samples.
Typical cloud cover shows the median total cloud cover among valid samples.

Neither number is the probability that a cloud will cover the solar disk. ERA5 describes a grid cell, not the exact line of sight from a beach, rooftop, or desert road. The layer is a comparison tool.

Spain’s National Geographic Institute makes the same distinction in its weather analysis for the 2027 eclipse. Its historical map shows generally low cloud cover across the Spanish path, with somewhat more cloud in western Cádiz from Atlantic moisture. It also says that actual conditions will become clear only near the event.

Use historical data to choose a base and preserve options. Use short-range forecasts to choose the final site. Those are separate decisions made at separate times.

Spain, Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt offer different kinds of flexibility

The path creates several plausible trips. It does not create a universal ranking.

Southern Spain puts totality near established European transport networks. The Spanish path includes parts of Cádiz, Málaga, Granada, and Almería, plus Ceuta and Melilla. Duration varies sharply across that geography. Coastal weather and constrained roads can also make a nearby inland alternative valuable.

Northern Morocco places Tangier near the early part of the path, with almost five minutes of predicted totality around the city center. A plan here needs a decision about which side of the Strait is the actual base. Do not make a same-day sea crossing the only route to your observing site.

Tunisia offers a later shadow arrival and longer totality around places such as Sfax. The practical question is not the country average. It is whether your chosen base connects to an open site, a second site, and the transport that you control on eclipse morning.

Egypt contains the point of greatest eclipse and the longest durations on land. Around Luxor, the Sun will be high and totality will last about 6 minutes 20 seconds. WMO climate normals for Luxor list an August mean daily maximum of 41°C, or 106°F, for 1981–2010. Shade, water, medical needs, and site management belong in the core plan.

These are starting points, not endorsements. Visa rules, official travel advice, transport schedules, site access, and hotel inventory can change. Check them against authoritative current sources before you commit money.

Build the backup before you need it

A backup plan is not another city name in a note. It is a route you can execute.

Start with two or three candidate observing areas inside the path. For each one, record the predicted totality, path-edge margin, historical cloud context, road approach, fuel or charging options, and the latest safe departure time from your base. Remove any option that depends on access you have not confirmed.

Then decide when the plan can still change. A mobile observer can respond to an event-week forecast. A tour group, ferry passenger, or traveler without a car has less freedom. That difference belongs in the initial destination choice, not in a panicked decision on August 1.

Keep the final move modest. A forecast does not justify an overnight race across several borders. The goal is not maximum mobility. The goal is enough controlled mobility to escape a local problem without creating a larger one.

What the map can settle now

You cannot know the event-day cloud yet. You can still rule out addresses outside totality, shallow edge sites, and bases without viable exits.

Place a pin on a candidate hotel, field, beach, or organized site. The planner calculates whether that coordinate reaches totality, when the central phase occurs, and how long it lasts. Turn on the historical cloud layer to compare the same eclipse hour across the path. Then inspect airports, route connections, roads, and nearby alternatives around the same pin.

The map does not declare a winner. It keeps the evidence in one place so that a long eclipse, a plausible sky, and a trip you can execute can become the same plan.

Open the 2027 eclipse map

Watch the Sun safely

NASA’s eclipse safety guidance is unambiguous: use safe eclipse glasses or a handheld solar viewer during every partial phase. Ordinary sunglasses are not safe.

Only during totality, when the Moon completely covers the Sun’s bright face, can you look without a solar viewer. Put the viewer back on as soon as any bright part of the Sun reappears.

Cameras, binoculars, and telescopes need special-purpose solar filters secured over the front of the optics. Eclipse glasses worn behind an unfiltered optical device do not protect your eyes. Get expert help before you point magnifying equipment at the Sun.

The best eclipse site is an overlap

The 2027 eclipse offers an extraordinary amount of totality. It also offers enough geographic choice to punish a one-number plan.

Begin with the umbra. Find exact points inside it. Compare their historical cloud context. Trace the last mile. Keep one alternate that your transport and your body can actually manage. Then book the trip that preserves those choices.

You cannot arrange the sky. You can arrange the conditions that give it room to open.