What time does Santa come to Chelmsford?
Santa is due in Chelmsford at 00:48, just after midnight on Christmas Eve.
42 sleeps until Santa comes to Chelmsford.
Be asleep by 22:30. He only lands when the lights are out.
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He only lands when everyone in Chelmsford is asleep and the lights are out.
Sunset in Chelmsford on Christmas Eve
It gets dark at 15:51, so there are 9 hours of night before he lands.
From the North Pole
How far Chelmsford is from the North Pole, measured along the earth's surface.
More about Chelmsford
Not quite Chelmsford? 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 Chelmsford
- Billericay8 miles00:48
- Braintree10 miles00:49
- Brentwood11 miles00:48
- Basildon12 miles00:47
- Canvey Island16 miles00:49
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 Chelmsford?
Santa is due in Chelmsford at 00:48, just after midnight 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).