The numbers

Santorini sunset times, month by month

7 min read

Santorini's latest sunset is about 20:40 around 1 July. It moves to 20:25 on 1 August, 19:48 on 1 September and 19:03 on 1 October. Greek clocks go back on 25 October 2026, which is what makes 1 November read 17:23. All times are approximate, sea-level, and computed for Fira.

This table is the reason the sunset cruise leaves at 15:00 all season and comes home at a different hour every month.

Every figure below was computed rather than copied, and the method is stated at the bottom so you can check it.

The numbers

Sunset in Santorini, 2026

Times are local, for 36.4167° N, 25.4333° E, at a sea-level horizon. Accurate to about two minutes, so read them as approximate.

Month, 2026	1st	15th	Clock	What it means on the water
January	17:13	17:26	EET, UTC+2	Out of season. The caldera is in cliff shadow long before the sun goes.
February	17:44	17:58	EET, UTC+2	Light back past 18:00, but no cruises run.
March	18:12	18:25	EET until 29 March	The clocks go forward on 29 March, which adds an hour to the printed time overnight.
April	19:40	19:52	EEST, UTC+3	The season opens with the earliest returns of the year. Bring a jacket for the last hour.
May	20:05	20:17	EEST, UTC+3	Sunset settles into a proper evening. The sea is still cool for swimming.
June	20:30	20:38	EEST, UTC+3	The latest sunsets of the year. A 15:00 departure is out on the water a long time.
July	20:40	20:37	EEST, UTC+3	The top of the curve, and it is flat. Between mid-June and mid-July sunset moves under two minutes.
August	20:25	20:10	EEST, UTC+3	It pulls forward about half an hour across the month. An August time copied from July is wrong.
September	19:48	19:27	EEST, UTC+3	Losing roughly three minutes a day. A fortnight moves the return by twenty minutes.
October	19:03	18:43	EEST until 25 October	The clocks go back on 25 October. See the table below — the drop is abrupt.
November	17:23	17:10	EET, UTC+2	Season over. The 93-minute fall from October is a clock change, not the sun.
December	17:03	17:04	EET, UTC+2	The earliest sunsets of the year fall in early December, not at the solstice.

The 87-minute jump from March to April and the 93-minute fall from October to November are both clock changes. The sun itself moves a few minutes a week, never an hour a night.

Any date

Sunset for your date

Pick the evening you are thinking of and read the sun’s answer. The same equations drive the chip on our homepage — computed in your browser, with no forecast service involved.

The week the clocks change

This is the detail most published sunset tables get wrong, and it is the one people book a paid cruise around. Greece leaves summer time on Sunday 25 October 2026.

Date	Sunset	What happened
Thursday 15 October 2026	18:43	Still EEST, UTC+3. The last comfortable sunset-cruise week of the year.
Sunday 25 October 2026	18:31	The last day of summer time in Greece.
Monday 26 October 2026	17:30	Clocks back. Sunset drops a full hour overnight without the sun moving at all.
Saturday 31 October 2026	17:24	End of the month. Several competitor pages still print about 18:14 here, which ignores the changeover.

If you are booking a late-October sunset cruise, check the date against this table rather than a month name. A week either side of 25 October is an hour of difference.

What it means for a sunset cruise

The departure is a fixed time. The finish is an astronomical event. Those two facts do all the work.

The semi-private sunset cruise leaves at 15:00 and runs to sunset. That start does not move much through the season, but the end of the day moves by more than three hours between June and November.

So a June cruise is home late in the evening, and an October one is home while it is still an ordinary hour. Same boat, same route, same €100 per person. Different evening entirely.

Two practical consequences. In June and July, plan nothing after the cruise and eat on board rather than booking a table. In late September and October, bring a jacket, because the temperature drops with the light and the last hour on deck is cooler than the first.

Departure times shift a little through the season because the sun does. The time on your confirmation is the time that applies, not the time on this page.

If you want the argument for watching it from the water rather than from the Kastro at Oia, we made it in the journal.

Two things this table does not tell you

Sunset from a boat is not sunset from the rim. These are sea-level, flat-horizon times, which is the right reference for a boat sitting on the water. Someone standing on the caldera rim at 250 to 350 m sees the sun set slightly later, because their horizon is further away. Do not use this table for a clifftop viewpoint.

From the caldera, the sun goes behind land first. Looking west from a boat in the caldera, the horizon is Thirassia and Aspronisi, not open sea. The sun disappears behind that rim before the time in the table. What follows is the colour, which is the part worth staying for.

How long usable light lasts after the listed time is not something we have computed, and we are not going to guess at it.

How these numbers were worked out

Computed with the NOAA solar position equations. The chain runs Julian century, geometric mean longitude and anomaly, equation of centre, apparent longitude, obliquity correction, equation of time, then the hour angle at a solar zenith of 90.833°. That zenith is the standard allowance for atmospheric refraction and the sun's own width. Position 36.4167° N, 25.4333° E. Local time follows the IANA Europe/Athens rules, so EEST from 29 March to 25 October 2026 and EET either side.

Cross-checked against the independent sunrise-sunset.org API for 15 June 2026, which returned 17:39:13 UTC against our 17:38 UTC — agreement inside a minute (checked 25 August 2026). Values shift by up to a minute across the four-year leap cycle, so treat every figure as approximate and refresh the table each year.

Tonight's sunset, computed in your browser

If this site shows you a sunset time for today, your own browser worked it out from the same NOAA equations while the page loaded. There is no API call and no third-party script behind it — nothing about your visit leaves the page to fetch a number that arithmetic can produce in a millisecond.

Ready when you are

Book the date, not the month

Send us your date and we will tell you what time the sun goes that evening, and what is free.

Check availability & book

Call the harbour office+30 698 977 1888

Common questions

What time is sunset in Santorini?

It depends heavily on the date. Around 1 July it is about 20:40, the latest of the year. By 1 September it is 19:48, by 1 October 19:03, and after the clocks go back on 25 October 2026 it falls to 17:30. In April, the season's start, it is about 19:40.

What time is sunset in Santorini in August?

About 20:25 on 1 August, 20:10 on the 15th, and 19:49 by the end of the month. August pulls sunset forward by roughly half an hour across its 31 days, so a departure time copied from a July page will already be wrong by the time you use it.

Is the sunset later in Oia than in Fira?

No, not meaningfully. The two villages are about 10 km apart, which is worth well under a minute. What does change the time is height: someone on the caldera rim at 300 m sees the sun a little later than a boat on the water below them.

What time does a sunset cruise leave?

Our semi-private sunset cruise leaves at 15:00 and runs to sunset, so the finish moves with the season while the start does not. The private sunset cruise runs 14:30 to 19:30. Times shift a little through the year, and the time on your confirmation is the one that applies.

When do the clocks change in Greece?

In 2026 they go forward on Sunday 29 March and back on Sunday 25 October. Greece keeps EET, UTC+2, in winter and EEST, UTC+3, in summer. The October change is the one that catches people out: sunset falls from 18:31 to 17:30 overnight, with no astronomical change at all.

Why do published Santorini sunset times disagree with each other?

Mostly because many pages print a generic value that ignores the year's changeover date. Several still show about 18:14 for 31 October, which would only be right if the clocks had not yet gone back. In 2026 they change on the 25th, so the correct figure is 17:24.

Santorini Boat Tour - Water Taxi is a catamaran cruise and water taxi operator based in Fira, Santorini.

Updated August 2026