The sun and the clock in Gibraltar (2026)
Gibraltar lies at 5.4°W. Its time zone, UTC+1, is built around the 15°E meridian. The 20.4° gap between them means the clock runs roughly 81 minutes ahead of the sun: solar noon arrives at about 13:21 rather than 12:00. Under daylight saving the clocks move 60 minutes forward, widening the gap to 141 minutes and pushing solar noon to 14:21.
The longest day of 2026 is 22 June, with 14h 37m of daylight. The shortest is 22 December, with 9h 42m. The swing between them is 4h 55m. This is the latitude band where the difference between summer and winter evenings is most obvious.
The earliest sunrise and the latest sunset do not land on the longest day. In Gibraltar the sun comes up earliest on 14 June at 07:03, while the latest sunset waits until 30 June at 21:42. The equation of time is what separates them: the Earth's elliptical orbit and axial tilt move solar noon back and forth by several minutes over the year.
The sky stays usably light for a while after the sun goes down. In Gibraltar that civil twilight runs about 26 minutes at the equinox.
Every figure in this section is computed from the city's own latitude, longitude and IANA time zone using NOAA solar algorithms (Spencer, 1971), accurate to about ±2 arcminutes below 65° latitude.
