Full Moon March 2026: Total Lunar Eclipse, the Blood Moon in Virgo

Detail	March 2026 full moon
Date	Tuesday, March 3, 2026
Full moon, US Eastern	6:38 a.m. EST
Full moon, UTC	11:38 UTC
Totality	6:04 to 7:03 a.m. EST (11:04 to 12:03 UTC)
Moon sign	Virgo, about 13 degrees
Sun opposite	Pisces
Eclipse	total lunar eclipse (blood moon)
Traditional name	Worm Moon
Next new moon	March 18, 9:24 p.m. EDT, in Pisces
All 2026 full moons	Full moon 2026 calendar

What happened in the sky

A lunar eclipse needs a full moon close to a lunar node, one of the two crossing points of the Moon's orbit and the Sun's path. On March 3 the line-up was good enough for the Moon to pass completely into the umbra, Earth's dark inner shadow. The only light reaching it then had been bent through Earth's atmosphere, filtered red the way a sunset is, which is where the name blood moon comes from.

By the site's eclipse calculation, the partial phase began at 4:50 a.m. EST, totality started at 6:04, the middle of the eclipse came at 6:34, and totality ended at 7:03 a.m. In Pacific time that is 3:04 to 4:03 a.m. for the red phase, with the Moon well up in the western sky over Los Angeles. In New York the Moon was sinking toward the horizon as dawn came, and it set soon after totality began.

The Worm Moon name

In the North American almanac list, March brings the Worm Moon, usually explained by earthworms showing up again as the ground thaws. In 2026 that folk name sat on top of a much rarer event. The almanac names repeat every year, while a total lunar eclipse in a given month does not.

Facts first, then meaning

The full moon stood at almost 13 degrees of Virgo in the tropical zodiac, opposite the Sun in Pisces. The eclipse was the second of four in 2026. It came two weeks after the annular solar eclipse of February 17 in Aquarius, whose ring of sunlight could be seen only over Antarctica, and before the August pair.

Astrologers treat a lunar eclipse as a full moon with extra weight, a turning point whose effects are read over months instead of days. Virgo stands for order, work, health and the small daily habits that keep life running. Pisces, holding the Sun, stands for faith, rest, dreams and letting go. An eclipse on this axis is read as a moment when a system you rely on, at work or in your own routine, either proves itself or shows where it needs to loosen. Mercury was retrograde in Pisces at the time, from February 26 to March 20, which tradition reads as a cue to revisit rather than rush. Why eclipses matter explains the wider tradition.

How an eclipse touches your chart

Find 13 degrees of Virgo in your birth chart. The house there is where this eclipse is read to have opened or closed a chapter, and the house holding mid Pisces is the other side of the story. Planets close to those degrees, or to mid Gemini or Sagittarius, got the most direct contact. If your Sun, Moon or rising sign sits near 13 degrees of Virgo or Pisces, this was a date worth noting in your journal and looking back on in the following months.

The full moons around it

The previous full moon was the February 2026 full moon in Leo, the Snow Moon. The next was the April 2026 full moon in Libra, on the evening of April 1 in Eastern time. The August 28 partial eclipse, the year's second lunar eclipse, is covered in full moon August 2026. The lunar calendar shows each full moon and eclipse for your location, and the full moon 2026 calendar has the whole year.