July 2028: Olympics, Total Eclipse and Five Saturdays
Dispatch, July 2028: the month opens on a Saturday and Los Angeles is hanging lights across two stadiums. The arithmetic says this is the year's biggest month. July runs 31 days, from Saturday, July 1 to Monday, July 31, with five Saturdays and five Sundays on the grid. The Olympic Games open on Friday, July 14 and close on Sunday, July 30. Somewhere above the schedule, on Saturday, July 22, the moon slides in front of the sun. Print early; this month does not slow down.
The Olympics move in
The Games open on Friday, July 14 and run to Sunday, July 30. The opening ceremony is staged across two stadiums, SoFi Stadium and the LA Memorial Coliseum. Athletics takes week one and swimming takes week two, a first for a Summer Games, so the pool keeps racing after the track goes quiet. Flag football and squash make their Olympic debuts, and cricket returns for the first time since 1900.
Olympic tennis follows on July 19 to July 28 on hard courts in Carson, three days after the Wimbledon final. Los Angeles asked spectators to arrive by bus and train rather than by car, and through the Games the city is running that experiment in public.
A crowded first act
Before the flame is lit, the finals stack up. The Euro 2028 final is played at Wembley Stadium in London on Sunday, July 9. It closes a tournament the United Kingdom and Ireland have hosted since Friday, June 9. Wimbledon runs from Monday, July 3 to Sunday, July 16, its final weekend brushing against the opening ceremony.
The Tour de France, in its 115th edition, started in Reims on Saturday, June 24. It finishes on the Champs-Elysees on Sunday, July 16, about a week earlier than usual so it clears the Games. One grid square per final. You will need every square this month.
Eclipse weekend
The sky takes the month's fourth full weekend. A new moon on Saturday, July 22 crosses in front of the sun, and mid-winter Australia stops to watch. Totality tracks from the Kimberley through Tennant Creek, Dubbo and Bathurst to the entire Sydney basin, then across the Tasman Sea to Queenstown and Dunedin. Sydney has not seen a total eclipse since 1857; this one holds about 3 minutes 45 seconds over the city.
The beds along the path were booked months ago, and the affordable ones went to Dubbo, Bathurst and Dunedin rather than Sydney itself. The sky opened its account early with a partial lunar eclipse on Thursday, July 6, sharing the night with the full moon. First quarter follows on Friday, July 28, and the month closes with 21 business days and 10 weekend days across weeks 26 to 31.
July 2028: 31 days, two eclipses, one ceremony split across two stadiums. The grid holds all of it; your pen does the rest.