{"id":745851,"date":"2026-06-19T03:31:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T03:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/745851\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T03:31:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T03:31:14","slug":"australias-darkest-weekend-of-2026-is-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/745851\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia’s darkest weekend of 2026 is here"},"content":{"rendered":"

This weekend, June 20-21, will be the darkest weekend of 2026 in Australia based on the amount of time between sunset and sunrise.<\/p>\n

Winter solstice 2026: When and what is it?<\/p>\n

The 2026 winter solstice will occur at about 6:24 pm AEST on Sunday, June 21, marking the moment Earth\u2019s south pole reaches its maximum tilt away from the Sun. This means Sunday will be the shortest day of the year in the Southern Hemisphere, including Australia, based on the amount of time between sunrise and sunset.<\/p>\n

\"Orientation<\/p>\n

Image: Orientation of Earth and the Sun on the date of the winter solstice. Source: Weatherzone.<\/p>\n

The days surrounding the winter solstice have the fewest hours of daylight for the year, while the surrounding nights have the most hours of darkness. As a result, this weekend in Australia will have the shortest amount of daylight and the longest amount of darkness of any weekend in 2026.<\/p>\n

How long is the day on the winter solstice in Australia?<\/p>\n

The table below shows how long the day will be in each Australian capital city this Sunday.<\/p>\n

\"Daylength<\/p>\n

Image: Daylength for Australia’s capital cities on the date of the 2026 winter solstice. Source: Weatherzone.<\/p>\n

There is a large range of daylengths across Australia on the date of the winter solstice, due to the large difference in latitude from the country\u2019s north to south.<\/p>\n

The winter solstice day lasts for about 11.5 hours in northern Australia, but only 9 hours in the country\u2019s south. This means Darwin has almost 1.5 hours more daylight than Hobart.<\/p>\n

Is the solstice the start of winter?<\/p>\n

Winter officially begins in Australia on June 1 and ends on August 31. This is sometimes referred to as the \u2018meteorological winter\u2019 because it aligns well with the coldest three-month period of the year in Australia.<\/p>\n

The winter solstice marks the start of the \u2018astronomical winter\u2019. While the solstice is not used to define the start of the season in Australia, it is recognised as the start of winter in some other countries, including the United States.<\/p>\n

What happens after the winter solstice?<\/p>\n

Following the date of the Southern Hemisphere\u2019s 2026 winter solstice, days will start to get longer, and nights will get shorter across Australia. This trend of lengthening days and shortening nights will continue for around six months until the date of the Southern Hemisphere\u2019s summer solstice in late December.<\/p>\n

So, while it may feel like the days fly by this weekend, longer days are waiting on the other side of Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This weekend, June 20-21, will be the darkest weekend of 2026 in Australia based on the amount of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":745852,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-745851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/745852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}