Daylight on the December solstice
Punta Arenas, Chile sits at 53.2 degrees south, further from the equator than any other city in the catalogue, and on 21 December it gets 16 hours 58 minutes of daylight. On the same date 5 cities in the north get no sunrise at all.
The longest December solstice days in the catalogue
| # | City | Daylight on 21 December | Latitude | Country |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Punta Arenas, Chile | 16h 58m | 53.2°S | Chile |
| 2 | Dunedin, New Zealand | 15h 44m | 45.9°S | New Zealand |
| 3 | Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina | 15h 44m | 45.9°S | Argentina |
| 4 | Queenstown, New Zealand | 15h 38m | 45.0°S | New Zealand |
| 5 | Christchurch, New Zealand | 15h 26m | 43.5°S | New Zealand |
| 6 | Hobart, Australia | 15h 21m | 42.9°S | Australia |
| 7 | Puerto Montt, Chile | 15h 11m | 41.5°S | Chile |
| 8 | Wellington, New Zealand | 15h 10m | 41.3°S | New Zealand |
| 9 | Lower Hutt, New Zealand | 15h 09m | 41.2°S | New Zealand |
| 10 | Osorno, Chile | 15h 05m | 40.6°S | Chile |
| 11 | Valdivia, Chile | 15h 00m | 39.8°S | Chile |
| 12 | Neuquen, Argentina | 14h 54m | 39.0°S | Argentina |
| 13 | Temuco, Chile | 14h 53m | 38.7°S | Chile |
| 14 | Bahia Blanca, Argentina | 14h 53m | 38.7°S | Argentina |
| 15 | Geelong, Australia | 14h 49m | 38.1°S | Australia |
| 16 | Mar del Plata, Argentina | 14h 49m | 38.0°S | Argentina |
How these figures were calculated
Sunrise and sunset were solved for 21 December 2026 at each of the 6,338 city coordinates in the catalogue, and the interval between them is what the table prints. Cities where the Sun never rises are counted separately rather than listed as zero-length entries at the bottom of a ranking they cannot be ordered within.
The date is the conventional solstice rather than the exact instant, which moves between 20 and 22 December across the leap cycle. At a solstice the Sun's declination is stationary, so a day's error changes any city's day length by a second or two. That is a hundred times smaller than the minute these results are printed to.
The reason this table is short at the top is the catalogue, not the planet. Our 6,338 cities cover settlements above 100,000 people plus 448 smaller originals, and the far south simply has fewer of them: below 53 degrees south there is very little that reaches a hundred thousand residents. Ushuaia, research stations and a scatter of Patagonian towns all get more December daylight than the top row here.
Why the southern list is so short and the northern one so long
The two solstice pages are meant to mirror each other and do not, because the land does not. The northern hemisphere carries continents up past 70 degrees, so the June ranking has a deep field of high-latitude cities. South of 45 degrees the map is mostly ocean: only the tail of South America and the south island of New Zealand reach far enough to produce dramatic day lengths, and only a handful of cities sit on them. That is why Punta Arenas, Chile wins by a margin of 1 hour 14 minutes over second place, a gap that has no equivalent in June.
It also means the December extreme is physically less extreme. Punta Arenas, Chile gets 16 hours 58 minutes at its summer solstice; a northern city at the equivalent latitude would get almost exactly the same, but the north also has cities another twenty five degrees closer to the pole where the Sun does not set for months. Nobody lives at the southern equivalent.
The northern cities that lose the Sun entirely
On 21 December, 5 cities in the catalogue never see the Sun clear the horizon: Longyearbyen, Norway, Murmansk, Russia, Norilsk, Russia, Tromso, Norway, Utqiagvik, AK. They are in the deepest part of their polar night, which the polar night ranking measures in days rather than hours. The contrast inside a single date is the point of these two pages: on the same 24 hours, Punta Arenas, Chile is outdoors in evening sunlight past nine and Longyearbyen, Norway has not seen a sunrise in weeks.
For the individual city rather than the planet, the number that captures this is the difference between its two solstices. Punta Arenas, Chile swings from 7 hours 32 minutes in June to 16 hours 58 minutes in December, a range of 9 hours 26 minutes, and the annual swing ranking does that arithmetic for every city we publish.
Questions about this ranking
- Which city gets the most daylight on the December solstice?
- Punta Arenas, Chile, with 16 hours 58 minutes on 21 December. It is the southernmost city in our catalogue, at 53.16 degrees south.
- Is the December solstice the shortest day?
- In the northern hemisphere, yes. South of the equator it is the longest day of the year, which is why every city at the top of this table is southern.
- Why does the southern list run out so quickly?
- Because there is very little inhabited land below 45 degrees south. The northern hemisphere has cities twenty five degrees closer to its pole than anything the south can offer.
- How many cities get no sunrise on that date?
- 5 of the 6,338 we publish. The true figure for inhabited places is higher, because the polar north is full of settlements far too small for this catalogue.