Most countries wait decades between total solar eclipses. Spain is about to get three major ones in three consecutive years: the total of 12 August 2026, the total of 2 August 2027, and the annular of 26 January 2028. They are not variations on the same event. They differ in type, in season, in time of day, in which half of the country they favour, and in how forgiving they are — and the differences are large enough that a plan built for one of them is actively wrong for the next.
2027: the total eclipse of the south
Eleven months after the 2026 eclipse, the Moon covers the Sun completely over Spain again — this time in the morning, and this time in the far south. The path of totality touches 105 municipalities across six provinces: Cádiz, Málaga, Granada, Almería, Ceuta and Melilla. The Canary Islands see only a partial eclipse.
Almost everything about it is easier than 2026. Maximum magnitude is 1.07 — the lunar disc comfortably larger than the solar one, against 1.03 for 2026 — and that margin translates directly into duration. The longest totality on Spanish soil is in Ceuta, at 288 seconds: four minutes and forty-eight seconds. Tarifa gets 278, Melilla 274, Algeciras 266, Marbella 196, San Fernando 194, Cádiz 174. Compare that with 2026, where the featured cities range from 30 to 108 seconds, and the 2027 event looks positively generous.
The other difference is altitude. In the 2027 featured cities the Sun stands between 37° and 41° above the horizon at maximum — a textbook mid-morning eclipse, with the corona isolated against open sky and terrain almost irrelevant. That is the exact opposite of 2026, where the Sun sits between 2° and 12° and a ridge in the wrong place can cost you the whole event.
The catch is width, not quality. One hundred and five municipalities is a narrow prize compared with the northern sweep of 2026, and the path is concentrated on a stretch of coast and two autonomous cities. Full per-town timings are on the 2027 event page.
2028: the ring of fire, from Huelva to Girona
Less than six months after that comes something different in kind. On 26 January 2028, at dusk, the Moon crosses the Sun without covering it: an annular eclipse. Maximum magnitude is 0.91, and that number is the whole story. Below 1, the lunar disc is smaller than the solar one, so at maximum a complete ring of photosphere remains around the black Moon.
What that means practically is worth stating plainly, because it is easy to get wrong. There is no totality, no corona, no sudden darkness, and — unlike 2026 or 2027 — no moment at any point in the event when it is safe to look without certified filters. Every argument from our piece on the 100% trap applies with more force here: as long as any photosphere is exposed, it is hundreds of thousands of times brighter than the corona, and the sky simply does not go dark.
In exchange, 2028 is by far the most widely accessible of the three. The path of annularity crosses 3,259 municipalities across 29 provinces, running the length of the country from Huelva to Girona — Andalusia, Extremadura, Castilla-La Mancha, Murcia, the Valencian Community, Aragón, the Balearics, Catalonia and Madrid all fall inside it. The longest ring is in Almonte (Huelva) at 432 seconds: seven minutes and twelve seconds. Sevilla gets 431, Córdoba 429, Huelva 426, Albacete 423, València 420, Castelló de la Plana 417.
And then it repeats the 2026 trick, harder. The Sun sinks as the shadow moves east, from 8° over Cádiz, Huelva and Jerez down to 3° in Murcia and Alicante, 2° in València and Castelló, 1° in Tarragona and Lleida, and 0° in Barcelona, Girona and Palma. In 325 municipalities in the northeast the ring sets while still eclipsed: the Sun drops below the horizon during annularity itself. Barcelona’s dataset entry has a maximum but no exit from the path; Girona’s has neither — the horizon arrives first. Details for any town are on the 2028 event page.
Why 2026 is the dress rehearsal
Three reasons, in ascending order of usefulness.
The first is geographic complementarity. The 2026 band enters over Galicia and leaves over the Balearics, favouring the north; 2027 belongs to the south; 2028 covers almost everyone. If you are in Andalusia and 2026 leaves you outside the band, 2027 is your event. If clouds ruin your 2026, you have two more attempts booked.
The second is that 2028 is, geometrically, the same problem as 2026. A low Sun near sunset, a path that runs from a comfortable altitude in the southwest to zero degrees in the northeast, and hundreds of towns where the horizon truncates the event. Everything you learn this August about picking a spot with a clean western skyline, about the difference between a listed altitude and what your actual ridgeline does to it, about how quickly light fails at that angle — all of it transfers directly to January 2028. The map already lets you switch between the three events and search any municipality in each.
The third is expectation management. After watching a real totality, the temptation is to treat 2028 as more of the same and be disappointed. It is not the same event, and reading 0.91 as “close to 1” is the mistake to avoid — an annular eclipse is its own spectacle, a ring of fire low over the horizon in the middle of a Spanish winter afternoon, but it is not a total eclipse and the glasses never come off.
One caveat about the tooling: the 2027 and 2028 pages carry the band map, the full timings table and the per-municipality search, but the 3D sky viewer and the climate layers remain 2026-only for now. The eclipse of 12 August is still the one with everything built for it — and it is the one that arrives first.