Solar Cycle 25: where the Sun is in its cycle right now.
·Checked September 4, 2026. Source: NOAA SWPC monthly sunspot indices and the SWPC cycle prediction. Rewritten when NOAA posts a new month.
Solar Cycle 25 is in its declining phase. The latest monthly sunspot number is 76 for August 2026, and the three-month trend is roughly flat. The 13-month smoothed number, which is the figure cycles are judged by, stands at 99.8 for February 2026 (it runs six months behind because it needs data on both sides). That is 62 percent of the cycle's peak of 160.9, reached in October 2024, 16 months earlier.
NOAA's prediction for September 2026 is a smoothed sunspot number near 90.9 (range 78.3 to 100.8), falling to about 8.1 by December 2030 as the cycle heads toward its minimum.
The Sun runs on a cycle of about eleven years. Sunspots, flares, and geomagnetic storms build to a maximum, then fade toward a minimum, then build again. The current cycle, number 25 since counting began in 1755, started in December 2019 and peaked in late 2024. This page tracks it with NOAA's monthly sunspot numbers, redrawn automatically when a new month is posted, so the chart and the sentences above are always the current state of the cycle rather than a snapshot from when the page was written.
How has Solar Cycle 25 gone so far?
The cycle began from a deep minimum. NOAA's smoothed sunspot number bottomed at 1.8 in December 2019, one of the quietest minimums of the past century. In December 2019 the NOAA and NASA Solar Cycle 25 Prediction Panel forecast a weak cycle, peaking near 115 in July 2025. The Sun ran well ahead of that. Sunspot counts climbed faster than forecast from 2022 on, and the smoothed number peaked at about 161 in October 2024, roughly 40 percent higher and nine months earlier than the panel's call. That still makes Cycle 25 a moderate cycle by historical standards. Cycle 19 peaked near 285 in 1958, and Cycle 24, the one before this, only reached 116.
What are the last twelve months of sunspot numbers?
| Month | Sunspot number | 13-month smoothed | F10.7 radio flux (sfu) |
|---|---|---|---|
| August 2026 | 76 | not yet | 116.2 |
| July 2026 | 78.1 | not yet | 136 |
| June 2026 | 94.4 | not yet | 138.2 |
| May 2026 | 101.5 | not yet | 125.7 |
| April 2026 | 79.3 | not yet | 120 |
| March 2026 | 86.6 | not yet | 130.7 |
| February 2026 | 77.4 | 99.8 | 135.9 |
| January 2026 | 115 | 104.2 | 151.2 |
| December 2025 | 124.2 | 107 | 160.1 |
| November 2025 | 91.7 | 106.9 | 141.6 |
| October 2025 | 114.8 | 108.5 | 139.7 |
| September 2025 | 129.7 | 113.1 | 153.9 |
Sunspot number is the international number from SILSO in Brussels as published by NOAA. F10.7 is the Sun's 10.7 cm radio flux in solar flux units, a second measure of activity that does not depend on counting spots.
What is the sunspot number?
A count of dark spots on the Sun's visible surface, weighted so that groups count more than lone spots: ten times the number of groups plus the number of individual spots, averaged across a network of observers. It was devised by Rudolf Wolf in Zurich in 1848 and extended back to 1749 from older drawings, which is why it is the longest-running measurement of any kind in space science. The monthly number bounces around a lot because the Sun rotates every 27 days and active regions come and go, so the state of a cycle is judged by the 13-month smoothed number, which averages six months on either side of a given month. That smoothing is why the official peak of a cycle is only declared several months after it happens.
Does a declining cycle mean fewer storms?
Fewer sunspots, yes. Fewer big storms, not necessarily, and not right away. The years just after maximum have historically produced some of the strongest geomagnetic storms on record, because large, complex sunspot groups still form and the Sun's coronal holes, which drive fast solar wind, grow larger as the cycle declines. The Halloween storms of October and November 2003 hit about two years after Cycle 23's peak. The aurora and flare pages on this site will keep reporting real events through the declining phase, and the odds of an X-class flare on any given week stay meaningful until about 2028.
When will Solar Cycle 25 end?
NOAA's current prediction carries the smoothed sunspot number down to single digits by the end of 2030, which puts the next minimum, and the formal start of Solar Cycle 26, around 2030 to 2031. Cycles run 9 to 14 years, so the exact date is not knowable in advance; a minimum is recognized only after the smoothed number has clearly turned back up. The first spots of the new cycle appear at high solar latitudes with reversed magnetic polarity a year or two before the minimum, so signs of Cycle 26 should turn up around 2029.
How does the cycle change what you see on the dashboard?
Near maximum, the SDO 171 and 193 angstrom channels show the Sun covered in bright active regions and the 131 flare channel lights up several times a week. Toward minimum, the disc goes almost featureless in most channels, coronal holes dominate the 193 view, and the 304 chromosphere channel shows a calmer, more even surface. The live Sun page shows all 12 channels as they look today, which is the same Sun this chart is counting.
Where does this data come from?
Monthly sunspot numbers and F10.7 flux are from NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center, which republishes the international sunspot number produced by SILSO at the Royal Observatory of Belgium. The prediction is NOAA SWPC's operational cycle forecast. The daily data run fetches both files every morning and redraws the chart, the table, and the summary when a new month appears.
Quick answers.
Are we at solar maximum right now?
No. The smoothed sunspot number peaked at about 161 in October 2024 and has been falling since. The live block at the top gives the current month's number and how far below the peak it sits.
When was the last solar minimum?
December 2019, when the smoothed sunspot number reached 1.8. That was the boundary between Solar Cycle 24 and Solar Cycle 25.
When is the next solar maximum?
Solar Cycle 26 should begin around 2030 to 2031 and peak roughly five years later, in the mid 2030s. No agency has issued a formal prediction for its size yet.