Leonid meteor shower 2026: the best night and hours to watch, city by city

The Leonids peak on the night of Tuesday 17 to Wednesday 18 November 2026, and the night before is nearly as good. The half Moon sets around midnight, while Leo, where the meteors seem to come from, is climbing out of the east. From a little before 1 AM in the US, Europe and Japan (between 1:30 and 2 AM in India) the Moon is gone and Leo is high enough for a fair rate. You then have until the sky starts to brighten, around 5 AM. It's a small shower this year, 10 an hour at a dark site if you're lucky and a few from a city, and nobody expects a storm.

The Leonids are bits of dust from Comet Tempel-Tuttle that burn up in our air when Earth passes through the comet's trail each November. A Leonid hits the air at 71 km a second (NASA), fast enough to cover the 845 km from Bengaluru to Mumbai, as the crow flies, in 12 seconds.

I worked out the moonset and dawn times below with Orbit, the Mac app I make, which, I should admit before you get excited, draws no meteors at all.

When do the Leonids peak in 2026?

The International Meteor Organization's 2026 calendar has the Leonids running from 6 to 30 November and peaking at 23:45 UT on 17 November, at about 15 meteors an hour in a perfect sky. A second forecast in the same calendar says 16:00 UT that day. The link is an archived copy, because on 20 October 2026 imo.net was offline after a cyberattack.

In local time the main peak is 5:15 AM on the 18th in India, 11:45 PM on the 17th in London and 6:45 PM in New York, where Leo hasn't risen yet. The second forecast is 1 AM on the 18th in Tokyo, with Leo already 24° up, so Japan gets the better seat for that one.

The American Meteor Society's calendar names the night of 16 to 17 November as peak night instead. I'd still pick 17 to 18, the night nearest the IMO's main time in every city in the table, though in the Americas the IMO's second time (11 AM Eastern on the 17th) does sit nearer the 16th. At 10 or so an hour, a clear sky matters more than the exact date, so check the weather from the 15th and go out on whichever night looks clearer.

Best time to see the Leonids in 2026, city by city

The table covers the night of 17 to 18 November in 10 cities, plus moonset on the night before. The best window opens once Leo's radiant, the point the meteors seem to fly out of, is 20° up. That's two fists held at arm's length, high enough for a fair rate, and by then the Moon has set in every city here.

NASA JPL's Horizons agrees with every moonset I checked (New York, London, Bengaluru, Tokyo and Sydney) to within a minute. The Hong Kong Observatory publishes its own moonsets, and for the same two nights (11:21 PM and 12:14 AM) they match the engine to the minute. Your exact spot can shift these by a few minutes, and buildings or hills to the west will hide the Moon earlier than the table says.

Don't pack up early. Leo keeps climbing until dawn, when the radiant is 67° up in the south-east from New York, 58° in the south-south-east from London and Berlin, and 66° in the east-north-east from Bengaluru. The AMS says most showers are best between midnight and dawn, and with Leo that high, the last hour or two before the sky brightens should be the best part of the night.

From Sydney the radiant rises only at 2:20 AM and is 17° up at 4 AM, as the sky starts to brighten, so you might catch a few low in the north-east and not much more.

Will the Moon spoil the Leonids in 2026?

First quarter is at 11:48 UT on 17 November 2026, according to NASA's catalogue of Moon phases: 6:48 AM in New York, 5:18 PM in India. That evening the Moon is a little over half lit, and it sets between 11:10 PM and 12:40 AM in the northern cities in the table. On the 16th it's a bit under half lit and sets about an hour earlier.

Leo's radiant rises between 10:20 and 11:10 PM in the US and Europe, and the Moon sets an hour or so later. In Bengaluru the two nearly trade places: the radiant rises at 12:20 AM and the Moon sets at 12:24. Before midnight Leo is below the horizon or barely above it, and the IMO calendar expects no moonlight trouble near the maximum.

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A closer look

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A dark night sky above low hills, with compass marks SW, W and NW along the bottom and faint constellation lines. Left of centre, a half-lit Moon labelled Moon · 52% sits low over the hills, with Saturn labelled near the top, Fomalhaut on the left and Deneb on the right.

The Farmers' Almanac's Leonid page, one of the first results Google shows for "leonid meteor shower 2026", has a different Moon: a 6% waxing crescent that sets in the early evening. The same page gives the new Moon as 9 November, which is right, and eight or nine days after a new Moon the Moon is about half lit and sets around midnight. Their advice, to watch from after midnight until about 5:30 AM, still works.

What time to see the Leonids in India

Go out on the night of Tuesday 17 to Wednesday 18 November. Leo has climbed to 20° by 1:30 AM in Delhi, 1:50 in Bengaluru and 2:00 in Mumbai, and the sky starts to brighten between 5:05 and 5:30 AM.

The IMO's main peak lands at 5:15 AM IST on the 18th, ten minutes after Bengaluru's sky starts to get light. Rude of it, but Leo is 68° up by then, so the dark hour before it is worth setting an alarm for. The second forecast, 9:30 PM IST on the 17th, comes before Leo has risen here.

If the forecast for the 17th looks worse than the 16th, go out on the 16th instead. In Bengaluru the Moon sets at 11:35 PM that night and Leo reaches 20° at 1:51 AM.

Where to look for the Leonids in 2026

The radiant sits in Leo's head, a backwards question mark of stars, about a fist from Leo's brightest star, Regulus. Leo rises in the east late in the evening and by dawn is high in the south-east, or high in the east from India. Meteors can show up anywhere in the sky, and NASA's advice is not to stare at Leo, because they look longer away from the radiant. Trace a trail backwards and it points to Leo.

Mars and Jupiter are both inside Leo this year. On Leonid morning the two planets are 1.4° apart, 4° from Regulus and 8 to 9° from the radiant, a little under a fist (NASA JPL Horizons, 08:00 UT on 18 November). Jupiter, at magnitude minus 2.1 (smaller numbers are brighter), is the brightest thing in that part of the sky, and Mars outshines Regulus too, so Jupiter is the easiest place to start.

They're closest at 02:04 UT on 16 November (the evening of the 15th in the Americas), 1.19° apart. I've written up Mars and Jupiter in November 2026 separately.

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A closer look

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A dark night sky above low hills, with compass marks NE, E and SE along the bottom and faint constellation lines. Left of centre, a red dot labelled Mars and a brighter dot labelled Jupiter sit close together above a star labelled Regulus, which joins a hook-shaped line of stars.

How many Leonids will you see?

The IMO's 15 an hour is a ZHR, the astronomers' best case: what one person would count in an hour under a perfectly dark, clear sky with Leo straight overhead (AMS). Nobody gets that. With Leo high before dawn, a dark field might give you 10 an hour on a good night, and a city a few. NASA says Leonid rates are often as low as about three an hour.

From a city you'll see fewer still: streetlights hide the faint meteors along with the faint stars.

If you'd rather drive somewhere dark for one shower this year, make it the Geminids. The IMO has them peaking at 14:00 UT on 14 December, with a ZHR of 150 and only a waxing crescent Moon. The Geminid meteor shower 2026 guide has the best night and the moonsets city by city.

When was the last Leonid meteor storm?

No storm this year. Two dust-trail modellers quoted by the IMO find Earth brushing thin, old trails between 17 and 19 November. One says that's not enough for a significant outburst, and the other allows for a modest rise.

The last storm was in 2002, says NASA, which counts a storm as at least 1,000 meteors an hour. Watchers in 1966 saw thousands a minute for about 15 minutes. The AMS calendar lists Leonid storms in 1833, 1866, 1966, 1999, 2001 and 2002, and its history pages describe the storm of 13 November 1833 being seen across the eastern half of North America.

The dust comes from Comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle, which takes 33 years to go round the Sun, and NASA says a storm can come roughly that often. The comet is next closest to the Sun on 20 May 2031. The AMS says that return may bring no storm at all, but possibly several good displays of more than 100 an hour.

How to watch the Leonids

Where Orbit for Mac fits (and where it doesn't)

On Leonid night Orbit is a way to find Leo before you go out. It puts the real sky over your city on your Mac desktop, redrawn once a minute, and the Moon in the menu bar is drawn in tonight's phase. Set Facing to East and turn on Labels on the Sky, and after midnight that week Regulus and Jupiter are named as Leo climbs, with Mars's label squeezed in under Jupiter's. Leo's own figure is drawn in faint lines, but version 1.0 doesn't write constellation names on the sky.

The pictures above came from its renderer ahead of time. In the app itself the desktop shows the sky as it is now, and there's no way to pick a date.

Orbit: Live Sky Desktop is $6.99 once on the Mac App Store (₹699 in India), with no subscription or in-app purchases, and no account to make. It needs macOS 15 or later, runs on Apple silicon and Intel, and the download is about 1.4 MB. The Mac page has screenshots and the rest of the details.