Every major meteor shower in 2026

The year, season by season

Winter opens loud: the Quadrantids spike within hours of the new year — blink and they’re gone — and closes louder still, with December’s Geminids, the strongest reliable shower of all, and the quiet Ursids at the solstice. Long, deep nights make even modest rates feel generous, if you dress for it.

Spring is the connoisseur’s season. April’s Lyrids end the late-winter drought — the oldest shower on record, prone to rare surprise outbursts — and May’s Eta Aquariids, crumbs of Halley’s Comet, favour the tropics and the Southern Hemisphere with fast, graceful earthgrazers before dawn.

High summer belongs to the Perseids — warm nights, hundred-an-hour ideal rates, and the year’s most-watched peak in mid-August. July’s Southern Delta Aquariids run quieter but longer, and for two weeks the two streams overlap: the sky rarely gets busier than early August.

Autumn runs almost without a gap: October’s Draconids (an evening shower, rare among its kind) and Halley’s other gift, the Orionids; November’s slow, fireball-heavy Taurids and the fast Leonids — famous for historic meteor storms — hand the sky straight on to the Geminids. Clear autumn nights are seldom empty.

How to read this calendar

Dates are peak nights — most showers stay near half strength for a night or two either side, so a clouded peak is rarely a lost year. Rates are ZHR: the standardized dark-sky maximum, not a promise for your backyard. Open any shower for its full almanac, then check it from your own city — the same shower can rate “excellent” in Cape Town and “poor” in Oslo the same night.