Wolf Moon – first full moon of 2026!

Originally written by Leo S. 🙏🏽 on January 2021, updated 2026

“The sunset embers smolder low,
The Moon climbs o’er the hill,
The peaks have caught the alpenglow,
The robin’s song is still.”
–John L. Stoddard (1850–1931)

The first Full Moon of 2026 is also a Supermoon, and reaches peak illumination on Saturday, January 3, 2026, at 5:03 A.M. EST.
Why do we call January’s Moon a Wolf Moon?
And, believe it or not, It’s not because wolves are hungry!
And what makes it a Supermoon?
Find out what’s special about this month’s Moon, as well as a little bit of folklore.

At a full Moon, it is located on the opposite side of the Earth to the Sun, so the face of the Moon facing towards the Earth will be entirely illuminated by the Sun’s rays.
Look for the first full moon of the year to rise from the eastern horizon around sunset that evening.
By midnight, the Wolf Moon glows bright and round overhead and, by sunrise, it will disappear into the western horizon.

In ancient times, it was common to track the changing seasons by following the lunar month rather than the solar year, which the 12 months in our modern calendar are based on.
For millennia, people across Europe, as well as Native American tribes, named in fact the months after features they associated with the Northern Hemisphere seasons, and still today we use many of these ancient month names as Full Moon names.
A common explanation is that Colonial Americans adopted many of the Native American names and incorporated them into the modern calendar. However, it seems that it is a combination of Native American, Anglo-Saxon, and Germanic month names which gave birth to the names commonly used for the Full Moon today.

The first Full Moon of the year is called “Wolf Moon”, a denomination that originates from the Native American tradition, but some sources also attribute to Anglo-Saxons. In Anglo-Saxon culture, the January Full Moon was also called the Moon after Yule, which is the time of the ancient festival celebrating the Winter Solstice around December 22.
The term “Wolf Moon” refers to the persistent wolf howls in the first months of the year, during the mating season and in the most rigid period, as supplies decrease.
It’s thought that January’s full Moon came to be known as the Wolf Moon because wolves were more often heard howling at this time and It was traditionally believed that they howled due to hunger during winter, even though we know today that they howl for other reasons: howling and other wolf vocalizations are generally used to define territory, locate pack members, reinforce social bonds, and coordinate hunting.
Regardless of where the name Wolf Moon comes from; wolves howl to communicate over long distances both in North America and in Europe. It is a way of saying “here I am” to the rest of the pack or “stay away” to intruders.
During the denning season in spring and early summer, wolves only howl to pack mates. As the late summer moves towards fall, wolves call more and more to neighbors and enemies and, while an average howl from a single wolf lasts from 3 to 7 seconds, a chorus by a pack can last from 30 to 120 seconds and longer during the breeding season in February. So wolves are particularly loud and “vocal” in the first months of the year, which is probably why people associated the month of January with howling wolves.
Despite the scientific community has no indication that the Moon phase plays any particular part in the calls of the wolf, wolves are nocturnal animals, so they are in general more active at night. And wolves do howl in the direction of the Moon: they point their faces toward the sky for better acoustics, because projecting their howl upward carries the sound farther.

Another fitting name for this full Moon is the “Center Moon”.
Used by the Assiniboine people of the Northern Great Plains, it refers to the idea that this Moon roughly marks the middle of the cold season.
Other traditional names for the January Moon emphasize the harsh coldness of the season: Cold Moon (Cree), Frost Exploding Moon (Cree), Freeze Up Moon (Algonquin), and Severe Moon (Dakota), while Hard Moon (Dakota) is due the phenomenon of the fallen snow developing a hard crust.
Canada Goose Moon (Tlingit), Great Moon (Cree), Greetings Moon (Western Abenaki), and Spirit Moon (Ojibwe) have also been recorded as Moon names for this month.

Supermoon

Well…but what is a supermoon, exactly?
Generally speaking, a supermoon is a full moon that appears larger than a typical full moon because it is closer to Earth.
However, there’s a bit more to it than that!
In fact, there are a couple of definitions of “supermoon” out there.
As a broad definition, a supermoon is a new or full moon that occurs when the Moon is near perigee, the point in the Moon’s orbit where it is closest to Earth.
By this definition, there can be several supermoons in a year.
The term, “supermoon,” was coined by astrologer Richard Nolle in 1979, who specified that the Moon must be within 90% of perigee.
On the other hand, as s strict definition, a supermoon is the single closest new moon and full moon of the year. By this definition, there can be only two supermoons each year, a full moon supermoon and a new moon supermoon.

And why do supermoons occur?
It all comes down to the fact that the Moon’s orbit around Earth is not a perfect circle, but an elliptical, oval, shape.
Because of this, the Moon’s distance from Earth changes as it travels around our planet. Additionally, Earth doesn’t sit directly in the middle of this elliptical orbit, so there are points in the Moon’s orbit where it is closest and farthest from Earth. These points are called perigee (the point in the Moon’s orbit where it is closest to Earth) and apogee (the point in the Moon’s orbit where it is farthest from Earth), respectively.
The Moon makes one complete orbit around Earth in about 29.53 days, which means it reaches its perigee and apogee points about once a month. When this occurs simultaneously as a full moon, called “perigee-syzygy” or, more commonly, supermoon!
”Syzygy” is the astronomical term for when three or more celestial bodies (such as the Sun, the Moon, and Earth) line up. When the Sun, Earth, and Moon form a syzygy, we experience a full or new moon, depending on whether the Moon is between the Sun and Earth or Earth is between the Sun and the Moon.
Although it has been all over the news in recent years, “supermoon” is not an official astronomical term. Actually, it didn’t even exist until astrologer Richard Nolle coined it in 1979.
At the time, he defined a supermoon as “a new or full moon which occurs with the Moon at or near (within 90% of) its closest approach to Earth in a given orbit.”

It sounds good but…does a supermoon really look bigger?
Given that a supermoon full moon is closer to Earth than a typical full moon, it does appear larger, about 7% larger.
This means that the difference between a full moon at perigee and a full moon at apogee can be up to 14%, which is significant.
But here’s the critical fact: unless you were somehow able to compare a normal full moon and a supermoon side by side in the sky, it’s nearly impossible to perceive a 7% difference in the Moon’s size!
Even if you could somehow place the year’s biggest possible Moon (the perigee full moon) next to the smallest one (an apogee full moon) in the sky, you’d just barely tell the difference.
In any case, if you want to be guaranteed to see a huge-looking Moon, it’s easy… Simply watch the Moon when it’s rising or setting!
A Moon down near the horizon will always look enormous, thanks to a well-known phenomenon called the Moon illusion, which makes our minds exaggerate the size of objects near the skyline.
In short, If you want a truly massive supermoon, you can have it—any night…