PreparedBritain

What time does Santa come to Arnold?

Santa is due in Arnold at 23:59 on Christmas Eve.

42 sleeps until Santa comes to Arnold.

North Pole Sleigh LineStop 210 of 463
Your stopArnold
Santa due23:59

Be asleep by 22:30. He only lands when the lights are out.

Want him to say their name? A 30-second video from Santa, made for your child.

Get Santa to say their name
Weather warnings · realMet Office, 06:20
No Met Office warnings for East Midlands right nowReal warnings, read from the Met Office. Nothing is out for this area.
ArnoldLerwickKirkwallInvernessAberdeenEdinburghGlasgowNewcastleYorkLeedsManchesterBirminghamNorwichLondonPlymouthIsles of ScillyCardiffDerryBelfastBangorNorth Pole

Be asleep by

22:30

He only lands when everyone in Arnold is asleep and the lights are out.

In the flight plan

Stop 210 of 463

He comes from Sutton in Ashfield (23:59) and goes on to Nottingham (23:59).

Sunset in Arnold on Christmas Eve

15:51

It gets dark at 15:51, so there are 8 hours of night before he lands.

From the North Pole

2,556 miles

How far Arnold is from the North Pole, measured along the earth's surface.

Your town or village

Not quite Arnold? Find your own place

Put in your postcode to see the time Santa is due in your own town or village. It stays in your browser.

Near Arnold

  1. Nottingham3 miles23:59
  2. Ilkeston8 miles00:00
  3. Long Eaton9 miles00:00
  4. Mansfield10 miles23:59
  5. Sutton in Ashfield10 miles23:59

Watch his sleigh live on the night, and see every city's time, on the Santa tracker map.

Questions

What time does Santa come to Arnold?

Santa is due in Arnold at 23:59 on Christmas Eve. Children should be asleep by 22:30, because he only lands when the lights are out. The time is from our make-believe flight plan, and it is the same every year.

When does the Santa tracker start?

The map and every town's flight plan are here all through November and December. On Christmas Eve Santa leaves the North Pole at 10:00, UK time, and the map follows him live until he is home at 11:00 on Christmas Day. He reaches Shetland, his first British stop, at about 21:30.

Is the Santa tracker real?

The flight plan is ours and it is for fun: we work out Santa's route and times from a timetable, so everyone sees the same sleigh at the same moment. The weather warnings are real, read from the Met Office, and so are the sunset times and the distances. For the worldwide trackers, NORAD has followed Santa every Christmas Eve since 1955, and Google runs its own Santa Tracker.

Does it cost anything, and what happens to my postcode?

The tracker is free and there is nothing to sign up for. Your postcode stays in your browser: it goes only to postcodes.io, a free postcode service, to find where it is, and never to us.

Santa's flight plan is make-believe, worked out from where you live. The weather warnings are real, from the Met Office.

Sunset times are worked out with the standard solar calculation. Distances are along the earth's surface.

Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Northern Ireland places from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0).