Prayer Times at High Latitudes: What to Do When Twilight Never Ends

By the prayertim.com Editorial Team · Published 3 November 2026

Above roughly 48° to 50° latitude, which includes London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Warsaw, Moscow, Stockholm and most of Canada, summer nights are short and the sky never gets fully dark. The sun may never drop low enough for the Fajr or Isha angle to be reached, so a formula returns "no result". This guide explains how communities handle that.

The problem

Fajr and Isha are defined by the sun reaching a certain angle below the horizon (for example 18°). In London in June the sun at its lowest is only about 15° below the horizon, so 18° twilight never ends: dusk glow merges into dawn glow. Further north, around 60° latitude, the sun in midsummer may not sink even a few degrees. Closer to the poles there are weeks of midnight sun in summer and polar night in winter.

Approaches used by scholars and timetable makers

1. Middle of the night: Fajr is placed no earlier than half the night before sunrise, and Isha no later than half the night after sunset. The night is the time between sunset and sunrise.
2. One-seventh of the night: Fajr begins one-seventh of the night before sunrise and Isha one-seventh of the night after sunset. This is a widely used rule in northern Europe because it gives practical times.
3. Angle-based (twilight angle): The night is divided in proportion to the angle, so for an 18° angle Fajr starts at 18/60 of the night before sunrise, and similarly for Isha.
4. Nearest latitude: Use the times of the nearest latitude where the signs of dawn and dusk occur normally, often 45° or 48.5°.
5. Nearest day: Keep using the last normal times from the last day on which twilight ended.
6. Follow Makkah or a fixed clock schedule: In extreme latitudes, some councils allow following the prayer times of Makkah or of the nearest country where the usual signs appear, or dividing the 24 hours into five periods.

Scholars and councils differ on which approach is best, and mosques in the same city sometimes follow different ones. Which to use is a religious decision that your mosque or a scholar can make for you.

What prayertim.com does

When the Fajr or Isha angle cannot be reached, or the calculated time would be unusually far from sunrise or sunset, we use the night-fraction approach: one-seventh of the night above 48° latitude and half the night below that. The method is documented on our methodology page. If your local mosque uses another approach, follow your mosque's timetable for congregational prayers.

Practical tips

• In summer, expect Isha to be very late and Fajr very early in northern cities; the gap between them can be only a few hours.
• Check your local mosque's calendar, as many northern mosques publish a yearly timetable that reflects a local council's decision.
• If you are travelling to a high-latitude place, the rules for travellers in our travelling guide may also help.