Manhattanhenge 2026: What It Is, How To Watch

MANHATTAN, NY — Manhattanhenge — an Instagram-worthy phenomenon where the sunset aligns with the east-west streets on Manhattan's grid — is back, signaling the city's unofficial start to summer.

The sun will create a striking visual effect when it sets directly in the middle of the east-west streets in Manhattan, with a half-sun visible on Thursday, May 28, at 8:14 p.m., and the full sun will be visible on Friday, May 29, at 8:13 p.m., according to the American Museum of Natural History.

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Then, later in the summer, Manhattanhenge will be back on July 11 and July 12, according to the museum.

For both solar events, expect to see lots of people cheering and taking photos.

"It's become a good people-watching thing, too," Jackie Faherty, a research scientist and education manager at the museum, told Patch. "You can watch the sun, you can watch the people freaking out, you can watch the cabs get annoyed that there are people in the middle of the street, and people are talking to each other, which so rarely happens in New York."

The best streets to watch Manhattanhenge are the wider east-west blocks, like 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd, and 57th streets, according to the American Museum of Natural History.

But, if you miss the four dates, fear not — Faherty said there will still be a "Manhattanhenge effect" where the sun passes directly through the grid, but doesn't quite kiss the bottom of the horizon as it sets. This will last from May 28 to July 12.

"Manhattanhenge is astronomy in your face — it's a time where people realize they live on this rock that's spinning around and orbiting this giant ball of gas and dust that we call the sun," Faherty said.

Though the sun has been setting in the same pattern across our sky since the dawn of time, the excitement around Manhattanhenge is relatively recent.

"Manhattanhenge" was first coined more than 25 years ago by the American Museum of Natural History-based astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Faherty said, but it didn't become a viral phenomenon until 2009, with crowds filling Midtown intersections to catch a glimpse and an Instagram photo, she said.

"Starting in 2009 or so, when I was a graduate student at the museum, I thought it would be fun for us to start doing a public program on it at the museum and invite people to watch it together. Word started to spread, people started to want a picture, and the event went viral. People even started planning trips to New York to see it," Faherty said.

For questions and tips, email Miranda.Levingston@Patch.com.