Sunrise 6:31 am and sunset 6:43 pm in Montevideo
Today, Thursday, September 24, 2026, the sun rises in Montevideo, Uruguay at 6:31 am and sets at 6:43 pm. That is 12 hours 12 minutes of daylight, with the sun at its highest at 12:37 pm. Montevideo is gaining 2 minutes 11 seconds of daylight a day at the moment.
Sunrise time Montevideo
The sun rises in Montevideo, Uruguay at 6:31 am today. That is the moment the top edge of the solar disc first clears a flat horizon, which is the definition every almanac uses and the one the times here are computed to. The sky starts to lighten well before that: civil twilight, the point at which you can read outside without a light, begins at 6:06 am.
Sunrise here is moving earlier at the moment. Over the year the earliest sunrise in Montevideo falls on December 6, 2026 at 5:24 am, and the latest on June 29, 2026 at 7:53 am. Neither of those dates is the solstice, and that surprises people. The longest day in Montevideo is December 21, 2026, but the earliest sunrise and the latest sunset never sit exactly on it, because the equation of time slides underneath the whole pattern.
Sunset time Montevideo
The sun sets in Montevideo, Uruguay at 6:43 pm. Light lingers after that: civil twilight runs until 7:08 pm, and full darkness, meaning the end of astronomical twilight, arrives at 8:07 pm.
The latest sunset of 2026 in Montevideo is on January 6, 2026 at 8:02 pm, and the earliest is on June 12, 2026 at 5:40 pm. The gap between those two readings is the whole story of the year in one line, and it is wider here than at a city nearer the equator and narrower than at one nearer the pole.
Daylight and solar noon in Montevideo
Daylight today runs to 12 hours 12 minutes, from sunrise to sunset. Solar noon, the instant the sun crosses the local meridian and stands at its highest, is at 12:37 pm, which is 37 minutes after clock noon. That gap is not an error. It is Montevideo sitting at 56.16 degrees west while its clock is set to America/Montevideo, plus the equation of time, which today is 8.0 minutes ahead of mean time.
The sun's declination today is -0.64 degrees, meaning it stands directly overhead at that latitude somewhere on the globe. Montevideo is at 34.90 degrees south, in the subtropical belt, which is why the day here is 12h 12m rather than the flat twelve hours the equator gets. Across 2026 the length of the day in Montevideo swings by 4 hours 42 minutes, from 9h 49m on June 21, 2026 to 14h 30m on December 21, 2026.
Sunrise and sunset in Montevideo month by month
The table below is the 15th of each month of 2026, computed for Montevideo, Uruguay rather than for the zone as a whole. Reading down the daylight column shows the shape of the year: long days around January, short days around July, because the southern hemisphere runs the opposite way round.
| Date | Sunrise | Sunset | Daylight | Solar noon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 15 | 5:47 am | 8:01 pm | 14h 14m | 12:54 pm |
| February 15 | 6:19 am | 7:38 pm | 13h 20m | 12:59 pm |
| March 15 | 6:44 am | 7:03 pm | 12h 19m | 12:53 pm |
| April 15 | 7:08 am | 6:20 pm | 11h 12m | 12:45 pm |
| May 15 | 7:32 am | 5:50 pm | 10h 18m | 12:41 pm |
| June 15 | 7:51 am | 5:40 pm | 9h 49m | 12:45 pm |
| July 15 | 7:50 am | 5:52 pm | 10h 02m | 12:51 pm |
| August 15 | 7:25 am | 6:14 pm | 10h 49m | 12:49 pm |
| September 15 | 6:44 am | 6:36 pm | 11h 52m | 12:40 pm |
| October 15 | 6:02 am | 6:59 pm | 12h 57m | 12:30 pm |
| November 15 | 5:31 am | 7:28 pm | 13h 58m | 12:29 pm |
| December 15 | 5:25 am | 7:55 pm | 14h 29m | 12:40 pm |
The extremes of the year in Montevideo
| Reading | Time or length | Date in 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Longest day | 14 hours 30 minutes | December 21, 2026 |
| Shortest day | 9 hours 49 minutes | June 21, 2026 |
| Earliest sunrise | 5:24 am | December 6, 2026 |
| Latest sunrise | 7:53 am | June 29, 2026 |
| Earliest sunset | 5:40 pm | June 12, 2026 |
| Latest sunset | 8:02 pm | January 6, 2026 |
The sun rises and sets on every one of the 365 days of 2026 in Montevideo. No day here is ever entirely without a sunrise, which starts to happen only above roughly 66.56 degrees of latitude.
Golden hour and blue hour in Montevideo today
Golden hour is the stretch when the sun sits between six degrees above the horizon and four below it, which is when the light is low, warm and soft. Blue hour follows it, from four degrees below down to six, when the sun is gone but the sky still carries a blue cast. Both happen twice a day, once either side of sunrise and sunset.
| Band | Time in Montevideo |
|---|---|
| Morning blue hour | 6:06 am to 6:16 am |
| Morning golden hour | 6:16 am to 7:04 am |
| Evening golden hour | 6:09 pm to 6:58 pm |
| Evening blue hour | 6:58 pm to 7:08 pm |
Neither is literally an hour. Each band is as long as the sun takes to cross those few degrees, so it is short near the equator where the sun drops steeply and long at high latitude where it slides in at a shallow angle. This evening it runs 49 minutes in Montevideo.
Twilight times in Montevideo today
| Stage | Morning | Evening | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Astronomical twilight | 5:07 am | 8:07 pm | sun 18 degrees down, the sky is as dark as it gets |
| Nautical twilight | 5:36 am | 7:37 pm | sun 12 degrees down, the horizon is just visible at sea |
| Civil twilight | 6:06 am | 7:08 pm | sun 6 degrees down, bright enough to read outside |
Twilight is longer the further a place is from the equator, because the sun cuts down through the horizon at a shallower angle. In Montevideo the stretch from the start of civil twilight to sunrise is 25 minutes.
Solstices and equinoxes in Montevideo
| Event | Date | Sunrise | Sunset | Daylight |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| March equinox | March 20 | 6:48 am | 6:56 pm | 12h 08m |
| June solstice | June 21 | 7:52 am | 5:41 pm | 9h 49m |
| September equinox | September 22 | 6:34 am | 6:41 pm | 12h 07m |
| December solstice | December 21 | 5:28 am | 7:58 pm | 14h 30m |
The equinoxes are the useful sanity check on any sun calculation: on those two days every place on Earth gets close to twelve hours between sunrise and sunset. It is not exactly twelve, and the reason is the same refraction and disc-edge convention that sets the times on this page. Sunrise is timed when the upper limb appears rather than the centre, and the atmosphere bends the image of the sun up over the horizon before it is geometrically there, so both ends of the day are pushed outwards by a few minutes. The seasons page has the exact instants.
How these times are worked out
The times on this page come from the NOAA solar position algorithm, the standard reduction of the calculations in Meeus's Astronomical Algorithms. The chain is short and has no fitted constants in it: the sun's mean longitude and mean anomaly at the instant, the equation of centre to get from the mean to the true position, a correction for nutation to get the apparent longitude, the true obliquity of the ecliptic, and from those two the declination and the equation of time. Sunrise and sunset are then solar noon plus and minus the hour angle at which the sun reaches an altitude of -0.833 degrees.
That number, -0.833, is doing real work. Half of it, -0.2667 degrees, is the apparent radius of the sun, because sunrise is defined by the upper edge of the disc and not its centre. The other -0.5667 degrees is mean atmospheric refraction at the horizon, which lifts the image of the sun by roughly its own diameter. Ignore both and every sunrise on this site would be three or four minutes late and every sunset three or four minutes early.
The conversion into America/Montevideo is done through the IANA time zone database that ships inside Node, at the actual instant of the event, so daylight saving, half hour offsets and rule changes are all handled by the database rather than by an offset written down here. Montevideo does not move its clocks at all. The zone stays at UTC-3 all year, so every change in the table above is the sun moving and not the clock.
Questions
- What time is sunset in Montevideo?
- 6:43 pm today, September 24, 2026.
- What time is sunrise in Montevideo?
- 6:31 am today.
- When is golden hour in Montevideo today?
- The evening golden hour runs 6:09 pm to 6:58 pm, and the morning one 6:16 am to 7:04 am.
- What time does the sun set in Montevideo today?
- At 6:43 pm on September 24, 2026.
- What time does the sun rise in Montevideo today?
- At 6:31 am, giving 12 hours 12 minutes of daylight.
- How many hours of daylight does Montevideo get today?
- 12 hours 12 minutes, and the city is gaining 2 minutes 11 seconds of daylight a day.
- Why is solar noon in Montevideo not at 12:00?
- Because Montevideo sits at 56.16 degrees west while its clock is set to a zone meridian somewhere else, and because the equation of time shifts apparent noon by up to about 16 minutes either way through the year. Today the two effects put solar noon at 12:37 pm.
- When is the longest day of the year in Montevideo?
- December 21, 2026, with 14 hours 30 minutes of daylight. The shortest is June 21, 2026 with 9 hours 49 minutes.
- Are these times adjusted for daylight saving?
- Montevideo does not observe daylight saving, so the question does not arise. The zone stays at UTC-3 all year.
Sunrise and sunset in nearby cities
Timezone converter · Seasons and solstices · Moon phases · Day of the year