Overview
- The shower reaches maximum activity Wednesday night into Thursday morning, with official timing confirmed by the American Meteor Society, NASA and the Royal Museum Greenwich.
- NASA and other agencies say meteors may be detectable from about 10:00 p.m. local time but that the best viewing window runs after midnight through dawn.
- Under ideal, dark-sky conditions observers can expect roughly 50 to about 100 meteors per hour while light pollution or clouds will sharply reduce counts.
- The display will be strongest across the Northern Hemisphere — including Europe, Mexico and the United States — and much weaker for most locations in the Southern Hemisphere.
- The Perseids come from debris left by comet Swift–Tuttle and remain active in 2026 from about July 17 to August 24, so observers unable to see the peak can still catch meteors on subsequent nights.