Will I See / United Kingdom / Belfast

Will I see the northern lights in Belfast tonight?

Tonight in Belfast

Probably not

Skies look partly clear, but auroras are forecast to be quiet: Kp 3.7, and Belfast needs about Kp 7.6.

Updated 8 min agoUpdates every 10 min
0%chance at the best hour tonight
51.4°magnetic latitude
Kp 7.6needed here
12 hdark hours tonight
18% litmoon

Hour by hour tonight

chance %cloud %Kp forecast● moon up
HourChanceCloudKpMoon

Loading tonight's hours…

Times are local (Europe/London). Only hours with the sun below −6° are shown. Kp forecast: NOAA SWPC. Clouds: MET Norway.

Get an email when tonight looks good in Belfast

The northern lights reach Belfast only in big storms. We'll tell you when one lines up with a clear, dark night. At most one email a night, one click to stop.

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Planning a trip to Belfast?

Auroras in Belfast need a geomagnetic storm (about Kp 7.6). In 2015–2025 that lined up with a clear, dark sky on 5 nights in 11 years, so treat a sighting here as a bonus, not a plan.

Trip odds here round to zero in almost every week, so we don't chart them. Your best bet is to watch the Kp index: when a storm reaches about Kp 7.6 and the sky above is clear, this page's live forecast will say so.

Every night you could have seen them, 2015–2025

5 nights in 11 years were clear and dark in Belfast while auroras reached far enough, by our estimate from NASA cloud data and the Kp record. The strongest: 11 Nov 2025 (Kp 8.7). Most came near the solar maximum of 2024–2025.

20151 night
  • 17 Mar Kp 7.7
2016none
2017none
2018none
2019none
2020none
2021none
2022none
2023none
20243 nights
  • 10 May Kp 8.7
  • 11 May Kp 7.7
  • 10 Oct Kp 8.7
20251 night
  • 11 Nov Kp 8.7

A "night you could have seen them" = at least one hour that was dark, mostly clear and with Kp at or above the Kp 7.6 that Belfast needs. Look north, low on the horizon, away from town lights: the northern lights here are usually a glow that a phone camera picks up better than your eyes.

Better odds nearby

Places within 700 km of Belfast with more good nights a year.

Shetland

5/yr
good nights a year (Belfast: under 1)680 km away · Kp 5 needed

Orkney

2/yr
good nights a year (Belfast: under 1)520 km away · Kp 5.5 needed

Caithness

2/yr
good nights a year (Belfast: under 1)470 km away · Kp 5.7 needed

Isle of Skye

1/yr
good nights a year (Belfast: under 1)310 km away · Kp 6.2 needed

Belfast northern lights: questions

Rarely. Belfast sits at 51.4° magnetic latitude, so auroras need about Kp 7.6, which means a geomagnetic storm. Our record (2015–2025) shows 5 nights in 11 years with a clear, dark sky and auroras strong enough to see.

There is no reliable season: auroras this far south come with strong geomagnetic storms, which can happen in any dark month. Watch the live forecast and the Kp index instead of planning a trip around them.

About Kp 7.6. We worked that out from Belfast's magnetic latitude (51.4°) with a rule calibrated against the Finnish Meteorological Institute's sighting statistics. Look north, low on the horizon, away from town lights.

Every 10 minutes we take NOAA's Kp forecast and MET Norway's hourly cloud forecast for Belfast, add the sun and moon, and score each hour of tonight. The verdict is the best hour. How it works explains the calibration.