About the 2028 lunar calendar
The table above lists every full moon and new moon of 2028 with its exact time in UTC. Phases are global events — a full moon happens at a single instant for the whole planet — so a UTC list keeps one unambiguous record that every reader can convert to their own clock. 2028 is a leap year: February gains a day, the solar year runs 366 days, and the phase dates spread slightly differently than they did in 2027.
Thirteen full moons but only twelve new moons
2028 is the mirror image of 2027. It holds thirteen full moons but only twelve new moons, where 2027 held thirteen new moons and twelve full moons. The reason is the same in both cases: the lunar cycle does not divide evenly into the calendar year, so an extra phase slips in roughly every second or third year. Because the thirteenth full moon of 2028 falls on 31 December — after the 2 December full moon — December 2028 carries two full moons, and the second is a blue moon. It is not a rare colour event; it is simply the arithmetic of 29.53 not dividing 366.
Why the lunar and solar years never match
The synodic month — new moon to new moon — is 29.530588 days, and the tropical year is about 365.242 days. Divide one by the other and you get roughly 12.37 months per year. The fractional 0.37 is the whole story: a calendar year holds twelve complete lunar cycles plus about 11 days left over. Those leftovers accumulate, so each year’s full moons fall about 11 days earlier than the year before, until the drift wraps around. That is why a blue moon lands in December 2028 and not in 2027, and why the dates of every phase shift on a cycle of roughly three years.
UTC and your local date
A phase happens at one instant, but the date you write on your calendar can differ by a whole day depending on where you live. Take the full moon of 11 March 2028 at 01:06 UTC, barely past midnight UTC. In London it is 01:06 on the 11th; in New York it is 20:06 on the 10th; in Los Angeles 17:06 on the 10th — the previous day entirely. Whenever a phase occurs near midnight UTC, some part of the world will see it on a different calendar date. If an exact date matters, always convert from UTC to your own time zone rather than trusting a list headed “UTC”.
The 2028 full moons month by month
The thirteen full moons of 2028, with exact UTC times, are listed below. Spacing them out shows the rhythm directly: they fall almost exactly 29.5 days apart, drifting about a day later in the month each cycle — which is what pushes the thirteenth into late December.
| # | Full moon (2028) | Time (UTC) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | January 12 | 04:03 |
| 2 | February 10 | 15:04 |
| 3 | March 11 | 01:06 |
| 4 | April 9 | 10:27 |
| 5 | May 8 | 19:49 |
| 6 | June 7 | 06:09 |
| 7 | July 6 | 18:11 |
| 8 | August 5 | 08:10 |
| 9 | September 3 | 23:48 |
| 10 | October 3 | 16:25 |
| 11 | November 2 | 09:17 |
| 12 | December 2 | 01:40 |
| 13 | December 31 | 16:48 |
Times are computed from the Meeus phase algorithm (full lunar orbital theory) and rounded to the nearest minute, so they match published almanacs to the minute.
Three worked examples
Example 1 — counting the full moons in a year. Divide 365.242 by 29.530588 and you get 12.37. Twelve full cycles fit with about 11 days left over — and in 2028 those leftover days run just long enough to squeeze in a thirteenth full moon, on 31 December. In 2027 the same leftover fell just short, so that year stopped at twelve.
Example 2 — why a date can change between UTC and local time. The 11 March 2028 full moon occurs at 01:06 UTC. In London that is 01:06 on the 11th; in New York it is 20:06 on the 10th; in Los Angeles 17:06 on the 10th. Move the event even a few hours earlier and the calendar date shifts for millions of readers — which is why time-zone conversion is not optional.
Example 3 — how far the dates drift in a year. Successive full moons are 29.53 days apart, so four span about 118 days and five span about 148. Over a full year of twelve cycles the total (12 × 29.53 ≈ 354 days) falls about 11 days short of the solar year, and that shortfall is exactly why next year’s full moons arrive earlier on the calendar.
The twelve new moons of 2028
For completeness, the table below lists all twelve new moons of 2028. New moons are invisible — the Moon sits between Earth and the Sun, its far side lit — but they matter more to stargazers than any other phase, because a new moon means a sky that stays dark all night. If you are planning a meteor watch or a deep-sky session, these are the dates to circle.
| # | New moon (2028) | Time (UTC) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | January 26 | 15:12 |
| 2 | February 25 | 10:37 |
| 3 | March 26 | 04:31 |
| 4 | April 24 | 19:47 |
| 5 | May 24 | 08:16 |
| 6 | June 22 | 18:27 |
| 7 | July 22 | 03:02 |
| 8 | August 20 | 10:44 |
| 9 | September 18 | 18:24 |
| 10 | October 18 | 02:57 |
| 11 | November 16 | 13:18 |
| 12 | December 16 | 02:06 |
What a synodic month really is
The 29.53-day figure is not a fixed physical constant; it is an average. The Moon’s orbit is elliptical, so it moves faster near perigee and slower near apogee, and the Sun’s gravity perturbs it further. The real interval from one new moon to the next varies by several hours either side of the mean, which is why the times above are not spaced by an identical number of hours. Across a year those variations cancel out, but within a single cycle they can shift a phase by enough to push a late-evening event into the next calendar day in some time zones.
Traditional full-moon names and why they move
Many cultures named each month’s full moon — the Wolf Moon in January, the Harvest Moon in autumn, the Cold Moon in December. Those names are tied not to a fixed date but to the full moon nearest a season or an event, so they drift with the lunar calendar. The Harvest Moon, for instance, is the full moon closest to the autumn equinox and can fall in September or early October — precisely the drift explained above. The Moon itself is unchanged from year to year; only our labels move around it.
Planning 2028’s dark nights
The 2028 tables list the instants the phases fall; the useful nights are the new moons. These are the items that help you use them and keep a record of what you saw.
- Planisphere — The calendar gives the dark nights; a star wheel shows what is up on them, set for your latitude.
- Astronomy log book — The calendar marks when to look; a log records what you saw, which is how a casual night out turns into knowing the sky.
- Refractor telescope — The new-moon nights the tables identify are the ones worth pointing a scope at the Moon, planets and brighter clusters.
- Red-light flashlight — For notes and charts at the eyepiece without spoiling the dark adaptation a session depends on.
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Sources and standards
Where these figures come from
Every formula on this page is implemented from the published reference material below, and the 2028 dates are computed with the Meeus phase algorithm — the same routine the page’s calculator runs.
- NASA Science — Moon phases — the synodic month and the eight named phases used on this page.
- NASA Science — Moon — lunar phases, libration and the orbital mechanics behind the phase fraction.
- timeanddate.com — Moon phases in Mexico City — a worked local-time phase table to check the UTC conversions here against.
Figures, formulas and reference tables last verified: 27 September 2026.