2026-09-08
Prayer Times in Scotland and Northern England
The further north you go in Britain, the more extreme the seasonal swing becomes. Glasgow at 55.9 degrees north and Edinburgh at 56 sit far enough up that both the summer and winter extremes are noticeably sharper than in London. For prayer times, that shows up most in Fajr and Isha.
The summer problem is stronger here
For an 18-degree Fajr, the period when the angle is never reached runs roughly from 20 May to 22 July in London. In Glasgow and Edinburgh it is considerably longer, and in the far north of Scotland longer still. Through those weeks any timetable is applying a rule rather than a direct calculation, which is why northern timetables can differ from one another more than southern ones do.
Winter is the mirror image
In December, Glasgow gets under seven hours between sunrise and sunset. All five prayers are compressed into a short day, with Dhuhr, Asr and Maghrib falling close together in the early afternoon. Isha then arrives comparatively early in the evening. Many people find the winter schedule the easier of the two, though the short window between Dhuhr and Maghrib takes some planning around work.
Longitude adds to it
Scotland is also further west than most of England. Glasgow sits at 4.25 degrees west against London's 0.13 degrees west, which puts the sun about seventeen minutes later there for every prayer of the day. Combined with the latitude effect, a London timetable used in Glasgow can be badly out.
The rule we apply
Above 48 degrees latitude — which is all of Britain — we use the angle-based high-latitude rule. We chose it after measuring the alternatives against the official Diyanet calendar at comparable German latitudes: the seventh-of-the-night rule, applied automatically by several software libraries, shifted Fajr in Hamburg by up to 40 minutes, while the angle-based rule brought the same city to under one minute. That measurement is the reason the rule changed on this site in September 2026.
What your local mosque does
Northern British communities, particularly in Bradford, Blackburn, Oldham, Preston and Glasgow, often follow long-established local timetables. Where those differ from an app in June, the difference is the summer rule rather than an error in either. Your mosque's timetable is the practical reference if you attend congregational prayers.
Reading the table
Two checks work anywhere. Dhuhr should fall near the midpoint between sunrise and sunset. And the interval between Maghrib and Isha should widen through spring and narrow through autumn. If both hold, the table is computed sensibly for your location.