Why Africa won't see March 2026 'Blood Moon' lunar eclipse

The first lunar eclipse of the year mostly referred to as ‘Blood Moon’, is expected to occur on March 3rd 2026.

During this celestial event, the Earth will block most of the Sun's light from reaching the Moon, with the remaining light reaching the Moon, then filtered through Earth's atmosphere.

The filtered light scatters shorter wavelengths and allows red and orange tones to pass through and the moon appears to take on a red hue, giving rise to the name "blood moon".

According to NASA, this alignment can only happen during a full moon, and is only expected to be witnessed mostly across the North America, Australia, New Zealand and eastern Asia.

Unfortunately, it will skip Africa entirely. A blood moon or a total lunar eclipse "skips" certain regions, primarily due to the timing of the Earth's rotation, as the eclipse occurs when the moon is below the horizon (daytime) for that location.

So it is purely a matter of geographical alignment, not a failure of the celestial event itself. The interstellar happening is to last for an approximate 58 minutes and 15 seconds.

It is important to note that the entire eclipse process, including partial phases, takes much longer, but only the ‘red phase’ is just under an hour.

While this March 2026 event maybe invisible to Africa, other celestial events like an annular eclipse may be visible in parts of Africa come next year 2027.

This anticipated event comes just barely a month after the annular solar eclipse that took place around mid-February 2026, popularly known as the ‘ring of fire’ eclipse.

While the ‘ring of fire’ eclipse was also not visible in the larger parts of Africa, the event occurs when the Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun while at or near its apogee, its farthest point from Earth.

Because the Moon appears smaller than the Sun at this distance, it cannot completely cover the solar disk, resulting in the characteristic halo effect.

According to CNN, in the ‘ring of fire’ eclipse, the Moon is solely centered in front of the Sun to create a thin, glowing ring, that lasts approximately 2 minutes and 20 seconds.

Africa has had a notable history with these events as well, having witnessed the longest annular eclipse of the millennium on January 15, 2010.