Where the World Gets the Least Sunshine — and the Cities That Barely See the Sun for Months

The capital of the Faroe Islands gets 884 hours of sunshine a year — that's an average of two and a half hours a day. Yuma, Arizona gets 4,050 — more than eleven. The gap is nearly fivefold. Some cities are drenched in light; others exist in a state of perpetual twilight.

Sunshine hours are one of the key indicators shaping quality of life, mood, health, and even the economy. Where sunlight is scarce, depression rates climb, vitamin D production drops, and architecture and urban culture organize themselves around a single task: compensating for the dark.

Tórshavn: The Cloudiest Inhabited City

The capital of the Faroe Islands, an autonomous Danish territory, is the official record-holder for cloud cover among inhabited places on the planet. The sun shines here roughly 884 hours a year, and the rest of the time it's dense cloud, fog, drizzle, and wind off the Atlantic.

The Faroes are home to 54,000 people. The archipelago sits between Norway, Iceland, and Scotland — a zone where the warm North Atlantic Current collides with cold Arctic air.

The result is near-continuous cloud cover. A clear day is an event that Faroese people mark the way Muscovites mark the first snowfall: photographing it and posting it on social media.

Temperatures, meanwhile, are mild: +3–5°C in winter, +10–13°C in summer. Not cold, not hot — just gray. Year-round.

Jan Mayen: Even Gloomier, but Uninhabited

Norway's Jan Mayen Island in the North Atlantic gets just 823 sunshine hours a year — less than Tórshavn. But there's no permanent population: only the staff of the weather station and radio navigation post, 18 people, rotating every six months.

The island is home to the active volcano Beerenberg (2,277 m), wrapped in fog and storms. Clear days are rare individual occurrences. Those who serve there describe the feeling as living inside a cloud.

Nikolskoye: Russia's Cloudiest Settlement

The village of Nikolskoye on Bering Island (the Commander Islands, Kamchatka Krai) is the only settlement in the Aleutsky District. About 600 residents, descendants of Aleuts and Russian settlers.

A sunny day here is a rarity people remember.

The island sits in a zone where air masses from the Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea collide, generating near-continuous cloud cover. Fog, drizzle, wind — 300+ days a year. When the sun peeks through for a couple of hours, residents head to the shore just to watch the ocean glitter.

Murmansk: The Largest Sunless City

Murmansk is the largest city above the Arctic Circle: 270,000 residents. Beyond the cloud cover typical of Arctic coastlines, there's an additional factor: the polar night.

From December 2 through January 11, the sun doesn't rise above the horizon at all — 40 days. Not "little sunlight" — zero. The city runs on artificial lighting, in a twilight state where midday is only slightly brighter than night, and calling it "daytime" feels like a stretch.

When the sun finally reappears on the horizon for a few minutes on January 11, Murmansk residents climb the hills to greet it. That's not a figure of speech — the city holds an annual festival called "Hello, Sun!"

Over the full year, Murmansk gets roughly 1,100–1,200 sunshine hours — more than Tórshavn, but the sense of gloom is stronger because of the polar night. Several weeks of absolute darkness are something you get used to, but that never stops weighing on you.

Europe's Cloudiest Cities

Scandinavia and Britain form a zone of chronic sunlight deficit, but the records belong not to capitals but to industrial cities.

• Birmingham (England). One of the cloudiest major cities in the world — roughly 1,100 sunshine hours a year. In winter, clear days can be counted on one hand. London, contrary to stereotype, is sunnier — around 1,500 hours.
• Cologne (Germany). Around 1,500 hours of sun, but it feels gloomier due to dense winter fog over the Rhine. December and January in Cologne average under an hour of sun a day.
• Reykjavik (Iceland). Roughly 1,300 hours. Winter brings polar twilight, summer brings white nights. The contrast is extreme: from four hours of daylight in December to twenty-one in June.

A Tropical Paradox: Buenaventura

Not all sunless cities are northern. Buenaventura, on Colombia's Pacific coast, is one of the cloudiest cities in the world — and it sits right on the equator. Temperatures stay at +30–32°C year-round, but you barely see the sun: humid ocean air rises along the Andes' slopes and condenses into dense cloud.

Annual rainfall exceeds 6,000 mm, and it rains almost every day. The city is Colombia's largest port, but it lives in constant twilight, humidity, and heat. A tropical version of Tórshavn — only instead of +10°C and wind, it's +32°C and downpour.

How the Lack of Sunlight Affects People

A deficit of sunlight isn't just an inconvenience. It triggers a chain of physiological changes.

Vitamin D. It's not synthesized without UVB radiation. In Tórshavn, Murmansk, and Nikolskoye, deficiency is nearly universal. Without supplements: brittle bones, weakened immunity, higher risk of autoimmune disease.

Serotonin. Its production depends on light reaching the retina. Less light means less serotonin — lower mood, cravings for sweets, apathy. Scandinavia and Iceland have some of the highest antidepressant usage rates in the world.

Melatonin. Under constant cloud cover and the polar night, the body overproduces it: drowsiness, lethargy, a sense of perpetual hibernation.

How Residents Adapt

Sunless cities have developed their own strategies. In Denmark and Norway — hygge: a culture of coziness, candles, warm light, and gatherings at home. In Iceland — open-air geothermal pools, visited even in darkness and rain. In the Faroes — brightly painted houses: red, blue, and yellow walls against a gray sky.

In Murmansk and the Commander Islands, adaptation is simpler: "survive the winter, wait for summer." The polar day compensates for the polar night — from late May through late July, the sun never sets, and Murmansk residents make up for lost light during those two months.

For Comparison: The Full Scale

To grasp the range:

• Yuma, USA — 4,050 sunshine hours a year. The planet's record.
  Cairo — 3,450 hours.
  Madrid — 2,770 hours.
  Moscow — 1,730 hours.
  St. Petersburg — 1,620 hours.
  London — 1,480 hours.
  Murmansk — 1,150 hours.
  Tórshavn — 884 hours.
  Jan Mayen — 823 hours.

Between Yuma and Jan Mayen lies a fivefold difference. Residents of Yuma receive as much sunshine in a year as Faroese residents get in five years. And both groups consider their own weather normal — because it's the only weather they've ever known.