What time does Santa come to Durham?
Santa is due in Durham at 23:14 on Christmas Eve.
42 sleeps until Santa comes to Durham.
Be asleep by 22:00. He only lands when the lights are out.
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He only lands when everyone in Durham is asleep and the lights are out.
In the flight plan
He comes from Houghton-le-Spring (23:14) and goes on to Chester-le-Street (23:15).
Sunset in Durham on Christmas Eve
It gets dark at 15:42, so there are 8 hours of night before he lands.
From the North Pole
How far Durham is from the North Pole, measured along the earth's surface.
Not quite Durham? 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 Durham
- Chester-le-Street6 miles23:15
- Houghton-le-Spring6 miles23:14
- Washington9 miles23:15
- Sunderland12 miles23:14
- Newcastle upon Tyne14 miles23:15
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 Durham?
Santa is due in Durham at 23:14 on Christmas Eve. Children should be asleep by 22:00, 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).