On 2 August 2027 the Moon's shadow will cross southern Spain, North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, and totality near Luxor will last 6 minutes 23 seconds. That is the longest totality over land until 2114. If you sell eclipse glasses, the commercial question is not whether demand arrives, but whether your stock lands before it does.
Where the shadow goes
The path of totality makes landfall in southern Spain, then runs east across North Africa and out over the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa. In order, it crosses Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Somalia. The path is about 258 km wide at its broadest.
| Country | In the path |
|---|---|
| Spain | Cadiz, Malaga, the Granada coast, Ceuta |
| Morocco | Tangier |
| Algeria | Oran |
| Tunisia | Sfax, Gafsa, Kasserine |
| Libya | Benghazi |
| Egypt | Luxor, and the point of greatest eclipse just southeast of it |
| Saudi Arabia | Jeddah, about 5 min 53 s of totality, and Mecca |
| Yemen | Sana'a, about 2 min 39 s |
| Somalia | The northern tip of the Horn |
Two things make this one unusual. The Sun sits high, more than 80 degrees above the horizon over Egypt, so totality is long and the sky goes properly dark. And Luxor in August has among the lowest cloud probabilities of any eclipse track on Earth, which is why tour operators have been booking hotel blocks there since 2025. The press has taken to calling it the eclipse of the century, and for once the label is close to fair.
Everyone outside the path still buys glasses
This is the part that gets underestimated. A partial eclipse will be visible across essentially all of Europe, the Middle East, North and East Africa and western Asia. Partial phases require eye protection for their entire duration, which means the addressable market is not the few million people inside a 258 km strip but the several hundred million who will see the Sun partly covered and be told by every news outlet in their country to get certified glasses.
We saw the shape of this on 12 August 2026. We shipped more than 40 million pairs into Europe for that eclipse, with the largest volumes going to Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and Latvia. Countries well outside totality bought heavily, and they bought late.
The ordering timeline, worked backwards
Work back from the day the glasses need to be on a shelf, not from the eclipse date. Retail needs stock in hand several weeks before the event, because the sales curve is brutally front-loaded into the final fortnight and a container that clears customs on 30 July is worthless.
| Step | Duration |
|---|---|
| Artwork finalised and sent | Your side |
| Pre-production sample (PPS) made and approved | 7 to 10 working days |
| Mass production | 25 to 35 days |
| Sea freight to Europe | 55 to 60 days |
| Air freight to Europe | 10 to 15 days |
| Customs clearance and inland distribution | Your side, plan 2 to 3 weeks |
Put real dates on that. If you want stock in a European warehouse by 1 June 2027, the container has to sail around 1 April. Production takes 25 to 35 days before that, so the deposit needs to clear by about 25 February. The pre-production sample sits ahead of production, so artwork should be with us by the end of January 2027 at the latest.
That timeline is the arithmetic, not the constraint. The real constraint is capacity. Our line runs 1.6 million pieces a month, and in the twelve weeks before a major eclipse it books out. A deposit holds a production slot; an enquiry does not. For the 2026 European eclipse the buyers who got the quantities they wanted had confirmed in the previous autumn.
What happens to stock you do not sell
Overordering is less painful than it looks, because the filter material has a 3-year shelf life. Glasses produced in early 2027 remain within their stated life well into 2030, and there is a total solar eclipse over Australia on 22 July 2028 that passes directly over Sydney with 5 minutes 10 seconds of totality. Leftover stock from an August 2027 order is still sellable stock for that event, provided it was stored dry and undamaged and the print does not carry a 2027-specific date.
That last point is worth acting on at the design stage. If you are commissioning custom artwork, think hard before printing "2 August 2027" across the frame. Print the brand, not the date, and the same run serves two eclipses.
What to send us to get a firm quote
- Quantity, or the range you are deciding between
- Destination port, so we can quote FOB Ningbo or FOB Shanghai correctly, or DDP if you want us to handle freight
- Stock print (QW-SOZ1 to QW-SOZ5) or your own artwork
- Which languages the safety instructions need to be in
- Whether you need individual transparent sleeves
- Your target arrival date, so we can tell you honestly whether it is still reachable by sea
Minimum order is 2,000 pieces on a stock print and 5,000 pieces with custom artwork. Everything is made to order; we hold no finished stock.
Send us the quantity and destination and you get a firm FOB price and a production slot, usually the same working day.
Request a Quote