Sunrise in Singapore always comes close to 7 a.m., but the exact minute drifts by about half an hour over the year. We sorted the 365 rows of the US Naval Observatory's 2026 table for central Singapore. The earliest sunrise, 06:46, holds from 27 October to 7 November. The latest, 07:17, holds from 3 to 16 February. Sunset keeps the same calendar: earliest at 18:50 around the start of November, latest at 19:21 in February. None of the four falls near a solstice. Meteorological Service Singapore (MSS), whose pages take their sun times from USNO, prints 06:47 to 07:17.
Solar noon lags clock noon by about an hour in Singapore
Singapore sits at about 103.8°E, where the sun keeps a time close to UTC+6:55, while its clocks run on UTC+8. On our arithmetic, mean solar noon at 103.8198°E falls at 13:04.7. The National Library Board's BiblioAsia article of October 2025 puts the gap at "about one full hour" since 1 January 1982. A government press release of 20 December 1981 announced the half-hour move: New Year's Day 1982 would begin at 11.30 pm on 31 December. Section 51(2) of the Interpretation Act now sets standard time at 8 hours "in advance of Coordinated Universal Time". Our guide to birth times and solar time tells the history.
Sunset keeps time with sunrise through Singapore's year
Near the equator the day hardly changes length. USNO's table runs from 723 to 732 minutes, the nine-minute spread also reported in our guide to why solar term dates move. So sunrise and sunset move together, driven by the equation of time: the gap between where the sun stands and where an evenly running clock says it should be, caused by the Earth's tilt and its elliptical orbit.
In our run of NOAA's equations for 2026, the equation of time reaches −14.23 minutes on 11 February and +16.49 minutes on 3 November. Solar noon follows it, from 13:18.9 on 11 February to 12:48.2 on 3 November.
Sunrise runs earliest in November and latest in February
| Publication | Earliest sunrise | Latest sunrise | Earliest sunset |
|---|---|---|---|
| USNO, 2026, central Singapore | 06:46, 27 Oct to 7 Nov | 07:17, 3–16 Feb | 18:50 |
| MSS weather.gov.sg, 2026 | 06:47, 22 Oct to 12 Nov | 07:17, 1–20 Feb | 18:51 |
| CAAS AIP GEN 2.7, Changi, "average year" 2027 | 06:46, 15 Oct to 15 Nov | 07:16, 1–18 Feb | 18:50 |
The AIP prints UTC; we added eight hours. Rounded to the minute, an extreme lasts from under two weeks to a month, hence the ranges. Unrounded, our run of the NOAA equations puts the earliest sunrise on 1 November and the earliest sunset on 5 November, and the latest pair on 9 and 13 February.
The small gap between the earliest sunrise and earliest sunset dates is due to the changing day length. In November, the day is still shortening towards its December minimum; this causes the earliest sunrise to occur slightly before the earliest solar noon, and the earliest sunset slightly after. The lengthening day in February separates the latest times in the same way.
Refraction and the sun's radius bring sunrise forward by over three minutes
USNO's definitions page says sunrise and sunset "conventionally refer to the times when the upper edge of the disk of the Sun is on the horizon". Its computations place the sun's centre 50 arcminutes down: a 16-arcminute average radius plus 34 of average refraction. NOAA's calculation notes use the same 0.833° and call all of it refraction. The Hong Kong Observatory says refraction alone makes Hong Kong's sunrise appear "about 2 minutes" early.
On our computation for Singapore, where the sun climbs steeply, the convention puts sunrise 3.3 to 3.6 minutes ahead of the sun's centre crossing the horizon and adds about seven minutes to the day, which is why a Singapore day is never exactly 12 hours, even at an equinox.
Civil twilight precedes a Singapore sunrise by just over 20 minutes
USNO defines three twilights based on how far the sun's centre is below the horizon. For civil twilight it's 6 degrees, for nautical 12, and for astronomical 18. On our 2026 run, civil twilight lasts 20.7 to 22.6 minutes before a Singapore sunrise. At Greenwich, where the sun rises at a slant, it takes 33.2 to 47.7. Islamic prayer timetables list a time for Syuruk by their own conventions, and we have not compared them.
Calculated times coincide with the government tables to within a couple of minutes
We ran the NOAA equations, as implemented in our sunrise and sunset calculator, for every day of 2026. At USNO's printed position, E103°49′ N1°21′, sunrise matched to the minute on 355 of 365 days and sunset on 347, never more than a minute out. The MSS table in the AIP edition valid from 3 September 2026 is banded by groups of days for Changi; against our 2027 run there, every day of its "average year" fell within 2 minutes, and the AIP says times in any year from 2025 to 2029 "will deviate less than 2 minutes" from it. Against HKO's 2026 open data, at coordinates we assumed because the file states none, 349 sunrises and 349 sunsets matched, none more than a minute out.
MSS's public figures are no independent check on USNO. Its astronomical data page says its sun times are "obtained from the U.S. Naval Observatory", and the AIP says only that MSS prepared its table, without naming a method. HKO publishes its own.
To re-run one day, enter latitude 1.3521, longitude 103.8198, zone Asia/Singapore and 21 October 2026: the calculator gives 06:47, solar noon 12:49 and 18:52. USNO prints 06:47 and 18:52; MSS's page showed 6.48 am, 12.50 pm and 6.52 pm.
Until 21 October 2026 the calculator used the device's time zone with Singapore's coordinates, so a reader in London saw Singapore's sunrise that day as 23:47. It also computed the sun's position once a day at 00:00 UTC, leaving Greenwich sunsets 2 minutes out against USNO on 101 days of 2026. A revision on 21 October fixed this; the calculator now uses the location's time zone and recomputes the sun's position for each event. Every comparison above uses the revised code.
Extremes of sunrise and sunset come within weeks of the solstices in Hong Kong
Further from the equator day length counts for more, and the extremes drift towards the solstices. On our own run of the NOAA equations for 2026, at city-centre points we chose, Bangkok (13.76°N, 100.50°E) has its earliest sunrise on 2 June and its latest sunset on 9 July. Taipei (25.03°N, 121.57°E) has them on 9 June and 3 July. Kuala Lumpur, at 3.14°N, 101.69°E, keeps Singapore's pattern. Jakarta, at 6.21°S, 106.85°E, has its longest day in December and its latest sunrise on 18 July.
The Hong Kong Observatory's own 2026 table holds the earliest sunrise, 05:39, from 29 May to 18 June, and the latest sunset, 19:11, from 24 June to 14 July, both within days of the June solstice. The winter pair sit further out: the earliest sunset, 17:38, from 24 November to 2 December, and the latest sunrise, 07:05, from 9 to 23 January, each about three weeks from the December solstice.
View author profile → · Editorial policy
