Ramadan times

How it works

Each fasting day is a strip of daylight. Suhoor is the meal before dawn. The fast begins at fajr. It ends at maghrib, sunset, which is also iftar, the opening of the evening meal. Night is not a fast. Five prayers still sit on that day: fajr, dhuhr, asr, maghrib, isha. Many mosques add taraweeh after isha in Ramadan. Taraweeh is a companion of the month. It does not replace the fast, and it does not move sunset.

The clock is the sun at your location. A table printed for another city is a guess about a different horizon. Crossing a time zone moves “your sunset” to the place you actually stand that evening. Polar daylight needs a local scholarly timetable, not a copy of Mecca and not a temperate city’s hours pasted onto a midnight sun.

Ramadan 2026 sat in February and March. On 3 September 2026 those prayer-and-fast strips are closed. Ordinary five-prayer times continue year round. The next Ramadan timetable is 2027. Neighbouring towns can still differ by a day on the start and end of the month, because some communities begin on a crescent and some follow a published calendar. The daily times inside the month still follow the sun, not the argument about the crescent.

The five prayers plus two meals

Ramadan prayer times are the same five daily prayers as the rest of the year, calculated for that latitude and date. What the month adds is the two meals that frame the fast, and the extra night prayer many people attend.

Suhoor: eat and drink before dawn. Finish before fajr. Fajr: the dawn prayer. The fast is already on. Dhuhr: after the sun has passed its noon point. Asr: afternoon prayer. Still fasting. Maghrib: sunset. This is iftar. Dates and water are a common first bite; a larger meal can follow. Then maghrib prayer, in the order your mosque teaches.

Isha: night prayer. Taraweeh, where it is prayed, comes after. Fajr and maghrib are the two edges that matter for food. Dhuhr, asr, and isha do not open or close the fast. A late dhuhr does not excuse a sip at three in the afternoon. An early isha does not let you eat before sunset. Ramadan prayer times and Ramadan fasting times share a page because they share a sun. They are still two jobs.

Maghrib is sunset where you stand. A timetable from another city is a postcard, not a fast.

Why a copied timetable fails

Apps and mosque posters both need a method: which twilight they call fajr, which convention they use for asr, whether they round to the minute. Two honest apps can differ by a few minutes. For a fast, the safe habit is the mosque you actually pray with, or a method you have already chosen, not a new screenshot each dawn. For travel, switch to the city you are in before the next fajr, not after you have already eaten.

Long summer days at high latitudes make a long fast. Short winter days make a short one. The 2026 month fell in late winter for much of the Northern Hemisphere, so the fasts were not the longest of the cycle. That is a fact about the sun in February and March, not a change in the rule. The rule is still dawn to sunset. The hours are the hours of that place on that date.

If you only needed restaurant hours in a city that does not treat Ramadan as a civic close, the religious timetable will not shut the kitchen. If you needed iftar, you needed maghrib, not “dinner time” on a weekday card.