The full moon of 24 November is big. The one on Christmas Eve is bigger

The full moon of Tuesday, 24 November 2026 is exactly full at 8:24 pm IST, when it is 360,754 km from Earth, centre to centre. It rises in the east around sunset everywhere in India, between 4:02 pm in Guwahati and 5:42 pm in Thiruvananthapuram, and is in the sky all night. Whether it counts as a supermoon depends on whose definition you use. The next full moon, at 6:58 am IST on 24 December, is not in doubt: at 356,729 km it is the closest full moon of 2026.

Is the November 2026 full moon a supermoon?

“Supermoon” is not an astronomical term with a fixed meaning. It was coined in 1979 by the astrologer Richard Nolle for a new or full moon that falls within 90 percent of the Moon’s closest approach to Earth. Astronomy websites and NASA’s communicators took it up because it gives people a reason to look at the Moon, but they apply it in different ways.

We applied Nolle’s 90 percent rule to the Moon’s actual extremes in 2026: its closest perigee of 356,641 km on 24 December and its farthest apogee of 406,407 km on 11 December. That puts the line at about 361,600 km. November’s full moon, at 360,754 km, is inside it, so by that reading it is a supermoon. Some almanacs use a simpler cut-off instead. timeanddate.com, for example, counts a full moon as super only if it is closer than 360,000 km. By that rule November misses by 754 km, while December and January both qualify.

The Moon reaches perigee, its closest point in this orbit, at 2:32 am IST on 26 November, 359,335 km away, about 30 hours after it is full. The full moon and perigee have to line up closely for a true supermoon, and in November they are just a little too far apart. A month later they almost coincide: perigee comes at 2:02 pm on 24 December, seven hours after full moon.

How much bigger does a supermoon look?

On 24 November the Moon will be 33.1 arcminutes across. The smallest full moon of 2026, on 31 May, was 406,126 km away and 29.4 arcminutes across. So November’s full moon is about 13% wider and covers about 27% more sky, which makes it noticeably brighter too. December’s full moon is about 14% wider and covers about 30% more sky than that May minimum.

That difference is real but hard to see on its own, because nobody holds last May’s Moon in their memory to compare. What most people notice is the Moon illusion: a Moon near the horizon looks huge beside trees and buildings. The illusion is in our perception. When the Moon is on the horizon it is in fact about 6,400 km farther from you than when it is overhead, Earth’s radius farther, so it is about 2% smaller in angular size. Low, it can look orange or red because its light passes through much more air. That part is not an illusion.

What time does the Moon rise on 24 November?

In every city the Moon rises 20 to 30 minutes before the Sun sets, so look east just before sunset and through the next half hour, while the sky is still bright enough to show the landscape around it. You need a clear eastern horizon; a rooftop or an open field helps.

Kartik Purnima and Guru Nanak Jayanti

The full moon of 24 November is Kartik Purnima in the Hindu calendar, the night of Dev Deepawali on the ghats of Varanasi, and the date of Guru Nanak Jayanti in the central government’s 2026 holiday list. Festival dates follow the tithi rules of each calendar and can differ by a day from the astronomical full moon, so check your local panchang or gurdwara calendar for the day of observance. This year the astronomy and the calendars agree on the date.

24 December: the year’s biggest full moon

The closest full moon of 2026 comes on the morning of 24 December, exactly full at 6:58 am IST, around the time it sets in India. The two evenings either side are the ones to use. On 23 December it rises in Delhi at 4:36 pm, almost an hour before sunset, already more than 99% lit. On 24 December it rises at 5:47 pm, 17 minutes after sunset, against a darkening sky.

The third of the run is the full moon of 22 January 2027, exactly full at 5:47 pm IST. In Delhi it rises at 5:46 pm, so you can watch a Moon that is within a minute of being exactly full come up over the horizon, at 357,635 km. In Mumbai it rises at 6:23 pm, in Chennai at 6:02 pm, in Bengaluru at 6:14 pm and in Kolkata at 5:11 pm.

If you are out before dawn in the same weeks, the Moon also passes close to Jupiter and Mars; our guide to the planets visible from India this winter has the dates. For what India’s own lander found on the Moon’s surface, see what Chandrayaan-3 found at the south pole.

Do supermoons affect tides?

A little. When a full or new moon coincides with perigee, the extra pull raises what are called perigean spring tides. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration notes that these tides are only slightly higher than ordinary spring tides, though they can add to coastal flooding when they combine with storms or high river flows.

How we worked this out

Full moon times, distances, perigee and apogee, moonrise and sunset are our calculations with the open-source Astronomy Engine library (version 2.1.19), for the centre of each city and a flat horizon, rounded to the minute. Distances are between the centres of Earth and Moon. Angular sizes use the Moon’s mean radius of 1,737.4 km. The 90 percent threshold uses the closest perigee and farthest apogee of 2026. Festival associations are from the Hindu calendar and the Government of India’s 2026 list of holidays.

Sources

• Astronomy Engine, open-source astronomy calculation library
• timeanddate.com: What is a supermoon?
• NOAA: What is a perigean spring tide?
• NASA Science: Earth’s Moon