When is Isha when the sun never sets?

The prayers are tied to the sun. “Prayer has been prescribed for the believers at fixed times” (Quran 4:103). Fajr begins at true dawn, when light spreads along the horizon, and Isha begins when the red glow after sunset (the shafaq) is gone. The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “The time of Maghrib lasts as long as the twilight has not gone, and the time of Isha lasts until the middle of the night” (Sahih Muslim 612).

Calendars turn dawn and dusk into an angle: how far the sun is below the horizon. The Muslim World League uses 18° for Fajr and 17° for Isha. The Islamic Council of Norway (Islamsk Råd Norge) uses 16° and 15°. That works as long as the sun gets that low at night. In the north it often does not:

• Light nights. Around midsummer, north of about 48.6°, the sun never gets 18° below the horizon. In Oslo it does not even get 12° below. There is a sunset, but the twilight never ends, so the angles give no Isha and no Fajr.
• Midnight sun. North of the Arctic Circle the sun does not set at all for weeks: in Tromsø from about the middle of May to late July, in Longyearbyen from April to August. There is no Maghrib to count from.
• Polar night. In winter the sun does not rise. In Tromsø from late November to the middle of January. Dawn and dusk still come, so Fajr and Isha can be seen, but there is no sunrise, Dhuhr shadow or sunset.

Scholars agree on the starting point: the five prayers stay due in every 24 hours, wherever you live. They differ on how to find the times when the sun gives no sign. These are the main positions, with who holds them.

1. Pray by the signs wherever they still exist. Where day and night can still be told apart within 24 hours, you pray at the times the sky shows, even when the day is very long. This is the position of the Council of Senior Scholars in Saudi Arabia (Fatawa al-Lajnah al-Da’imah 6/130 to 136), and of most scholars. It is the first row of the table.

2. Estimate from the nearest place. Where the signs are missing, the same council says to estimate the times from the nearest country where the five prayers can be told apart. The basis is the hadith about the days of the Dajjal: when the Companions asked how to pray on a day as long as a year, the Prophet (peace be upon him) said, “Estimate its length” (Sahih Muslim 2937). The Islamic Fiqh Council of the Muslim World League in Makkah has ruled the same way. Its 2007 resolution is often summed up by latitude: up to about 48° the signs are followed; from 48° to 66° Isha and Fajr are estimated from the nearest place where they can be told apart; above 66° all the times are. The “nearest latitude” row in the table does this for Fajr and Isha. Some apply it as the nearest day of the year with normal times instead, the last row.

3. Divide the night. Most calendars and apps in Europe and North America turn the estimate into a fixed share of the night: one seventh, the middle, or a share that follows the angle (an 18° angle gives 18/60 of the night). Fajr may not come earlier, and Isha later, than that share. These are calculation methods, not separate rulings: they are ways of doing the estimate, and they are the rows 2 to 4 of the table. Councils that work for Muslims in Europe, such as the European Council for Fatwa and Research, have accepted estimating Fajr and Isha in the light summer nights, and many scholars allow joining Maghrib and Isha when a very late Isha is a real hardship.

4. Follow Mecca. Some scholars said that people with no normal day should follow the times of Mecca, or the length of its day. It is a smaller view; the nearest place is far more common in practice. The box under the table shows Mecca’s times for the day you pick.

In Norway, the calendar of the Islamic Council of Norway uses 16° and 15° with a few minutes of margin, and in the light summer nights a rule that divides the night. Many Norwegian Muslims join Maghrib and Isha in the weeks around midsummer. Mosques in Tromsø point to a separate northern calendar from the same council. Our prayer times for Norway keep the real sunrise and sunset, use the angle-based share in light nights, and switch to the nearest latitude where day and night can be told apart only under the midnight sun and the polar night. Each town page says when that happens, for example Tromsø (in Norwegian: bønnetider Tromsø).

Elsewhere, ask your mosque. In the UK, where summer nights never get fully dark, timetables use different rules for dawn and dusk and give quite different times (see prayer times in the UK). In North America many calendars use 15° with one of the night rules. Whatever your community uses, follow it and keep to it.

The fast follows the same rules. Allah says: “Eat and drink until the white thread of dawn becomes distinct to you from the black thread, then complete the fast until the night” (Quran 2:187).

• A long day is still a day. Where there is a sunrise and a sunset, the fast runs from Fajr to Maghrib, even if that is 20 hours. That is the position of the Council of Senior Scholars and most scholars.
• Real hardship. The same council says that whoever cannot finish a very long fast without harm, or is told so by a trustworthy doctor, may break it and make it up later, on shorter days. “Allah wants ease for you, not hardship” (Quran 2:185).
• No sunset at all. The times are estimated, as for the prayer: most say from the nearest place where day and night can be told apart, some from Mecca.

The “Fast” column in the table shows how long the fast would be under each ruling. Ramadan moves about 11 days earlier each year. In 2027 it falls in February and March, and the fasts in Norway are of a normal length: Ramadan 2027 timetable for Norway (in Norwegian: fastetider). It reaches the polar night around 2030 to 2032 and the midnight sun again in the mid 2040s.

The sun’s position comes from the same engine as our prayer-times pages, which is checked against published mosque and council calendars. Day length and the depth of the sun at midnight are good to a few minutes and a tenth of a degree. The night rules are applied the way apps do: the twilight time when it exists, limited by the rule. Under the midnight sun and the polar night they first move to the nearest latitude with a usable day and night, as our Norway pages do. The “nearest latitude” row steps south half a degree at a time, on your own longitude, until the twilight ends that night.

This page shows what each ruling gives. It is not a fatwa. For the times you pray by, use your mosque’s calendar. New to the prayer itself? Start with how to pray, step by step, or pray along with the audio.