August 2026 Calendar: Two Eclipses, Five Full Weekends
August 2026 opened on a Saturday and closed on a Monday, and the sky did most of the talking. A total solar eclipse crossed Greenland, Iceland and northern Spain on Wednesday, August 12, the first total eclipse over mainland Europe since 1999. A partial lunar eclipse followed on the night of Friday, August 28. Between the two, the month handed out five full weekends and ten weekend days. The grid stayed blank. Here is what went on it.
The shape of the month
August ran 31 days across weeks 31 to 36. It stacked five Saturdays and five Sundays into five complete weekends, with five Mondays right behind them. Business days fell to 21, the price of all that leisure. The month began on a Saturday and closed on a Monday.
The moon was new on the same day as the solar eclipse, around Wednesday, August 12. That is how eclipses work: the moon has to arrive on time. First quarter came around Thursday, August 20. The full moon rose around Friday, August 28, sharing the night with the partial lunar eclipse.
Much of Europe and North America saw a deep partial eclipse instead of totality, late in the afternoon. Iceland and northern Spain braced for eclipse-chaser crowds all the same. One useful line for any grid: the darkest minute of this month happened in daylight.
A hard month
August 2026 was also a month of disasters, and they belong in the record. A magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck Choco, western Colombia, on August 10, killing at least 288 people; the toll passed 300. On August 15, a magnitude 7.7 quake off Indonesia's Flores island killed at least 47 people. The toll later exceeded 100.
On August 26, flash floods from a glacial collapse in Tibet devastated the Trishuli river basin on the Nepal border. The death toll climbed past 900, with thousands missing. It was one of the deadliest late-summer disaster stretches of the year, and it deserves to be said plainly.
The month also said goodbye to two figures. Dolly Parton died at 80 in Nashville on August 25. King Harald V of Norway died at 89 on August 28, after a 35-year reign. His son succeeded him as King Haakon VIII.
One launch to finish
Two days after the lunar eclipse, on August 30, NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope left Earth. It rode a Falcon Heavy out of Kennedy Space Center. It is the agency's next great observatory, aimed at dark energy, exoplanets and wide-field surveys of the sky. The sky put on two shows in August, then accepted a new watcher.
For planning, 21 business days means the working month was short, and the big items needed early squares. Print two grids if the household splits its plans; five full weekends go further with two columns than one. September followed on a Tuesday, 30 days long, with the equinox three weeks in.
The month closed on a Monday, and the eclipse photos will outlast every to-do list. Print the grid anyway; August 2026 was one to file.