Staircase To The Moon Dates: Planning A Cruise Around Them

Two to three nights a month, the full moon climbs over the exposed mudflats of Roebuck Bay and lays a rippled path of light across the water that looks, from the shore, like a staircase climbing to the moon. It is Broome's most photographed free spectacle, and because it only happens on a handful of evenings each month, travellers plan whole itineraries around it. This page gives the full set of 2027 Staircase To The Moon dates and moonrise times, exactly as published by Visit Broome, and then does the harder job: showing how a sunset cruise fits the same evening, and what the tides, sunset times and seasons mean for the plan.

One scope note up front, because it saves people a confused search: no sunset boat product currently bookable in Broome is a Staircase to the Moon cruise. No operator states a Staircase departure, a moonrise cruise or a return time, and the one Staircase-titled boat product that existed is no longer running. The Staircase is a land event, watched from the Town Beach (Guwarri) precinct. The winning move is to pair the two: a sunset cruise on the water, then the moonrise from the shore, or the Staircase on one night and the cruise on the next.

What Is Staircase To The Moon And When Does It Happen?

Staircase to the Moon is an optical effect that occurs 2 to 3 days each month between March and October, when the rising full moon reflects off the exposed tidal flats of Roebuck Bay, the Yawuru Nagulagun marine park. Visit Broome names the Town Beach (Guwarri) precinct as the best viewing spot, and visibility always depends on weather, tides, sunset and moonrise.

The mechanics are simple once you see them laid out. Roebuck Bay has some of the biggest tides in the southern hemisphere, with a difference between high and low water of up to around 10 metres. When the tide falls, it leaves vast mudflats exposed, and the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions describes these flats as some of the most productive tropical intertidal flats in the world. If the full moon rises while those flats are still wet and uncovered, the moonlight pools in the ripple marks and runs out toward the viewer as a band of light broken into steps. The bay, the moon and the tide all have to agree, which is why the window is only two or three nights a month and why the effect is never guaranteed even on a published date.

The seasonal span, March to October, is set by the moon and the tide working together, and by Broome's own calendar: the wet season usually runs November to April and the dry season May to October, per Visit Broome's climate page. The published dates cluster in the dry and shoulder months, which is also when most of the town's cruising activity runs. On Staircase nights, the Visit Broome events listing notes that markets run at Town Beach on Hamersley Street from 4pm to 8pm on selected dates, which turns the whole evening into a single outing: markets, sunset, moonrise.

One related quirk worth knowing while you are in town with a full moon: the Fusion Moonrise, when the full moon lines up with the Fusion sculpture at the Carnarvon Street roundabout in Chinatown, happens twice a year. It is a separate photo opportunity from the Staircase, and the sources publish no dates for it, so treat it as a lucky alignment rather than something to schedule around.

The Full 2027 Staircase To The Moon Dates And Moonrise Times

The 2027 dates run from March 23 to October 18, with moonrise times between about 5.54pm (May 21) and 8.38pm (September 19), Broome local time. Visit Broome publishes the dates and moonrise times as supplied by Kimberley Astronomy Tours, and no dates beyond 2027 have been published.

The table below is the complete published 2027 set, month by month, exactly as the source gives it. Each month gets two or three nights, and the moonrise time shifts later by roughly 40 to 50 minutes within each cluster, so the first night of a cluster always has the earliest moonrise. Western Australia has no daylight saving, so these times hold year round.

Read that table with two practical eyes. First, the moonrise matters more than the date: the effect builds as the moon clears the horizon, so on a 5.54pm moonrise you want to be in position well before 6pm, while an 8.30pm moonrise gives you a long, relaxed evening first. Second, the middle night of each cluster is often the sweet spot for pairing with other plans, because the moonrise lands an hour or more after sunset, leaving room for a full evening on the water beforehand.

A note on years: there are no 2026 dates in the sources and nothing published beyond 2027, so this page does not invent either. If you are travelling outside 2027, the pattern holds, a cluster of two or three nights around each full moon between March and October, and the Visit Broome page is the place to confirm the exact evenings as they are published.

Can You Take A Staircase To The Moon Cruise?

No bookable sunset cruise in Broome is a Staircase to the Moon cruise. No operator on the roster states a Staircase departure, a moonrise cruise or a return time, and the one Staircase-titled boat product found earlier is no longer running. The Staircase is watched from the shore, best from the Town Beach precinct.

That is the honest scope statement, and it is worth stating plainly because searches for a "Staircase cruise" return optimistic results. What you can book is a sunset cruise that leaves the beach ahead of sunset and runs about 3 to 4.5 hours depending on the product. Whether any sailing gets you back in time for a given moonrise is not stated anywhere: no operator publishes a Staircase-specific return time. The plan that always works is to check the return time stated on the listing you book, compare it with the moonrise time from the table above, and if they clash, take the cruise the night before or the night after the Staircase. With two or three Staircase nights each month, and cruises running most of the dry season, the calendar almost always gives you both.

The bookable fleet, for orientation, is two operators strong. Broome Whale Watching and Broome Tours between them run the four bookable cruises on this site. The boats are catamarans and amphibious beach-launch vessels, because Broome has no marina or jetty; every guest boards from the sand, by amphibious transfer or a short wade to a tender. Broome Tours runs the 42-foot catamaran Ballena, carrying 5 to 36 guests with an air-conditioned saloon and two toilets below deck, and departs from Cable Beach or Roebuck Bay. Broome Whale Watching runs the 50-foot catamaran Orcaella, boarding in Roebuck Bay via the amphibious transfer. Visit Broome also lists a third sunset-cruise member, but its products are not bookable through this site.

Broome Tours' product on this site's roster is the Iconic Catamaran Sunset Cruise, about 3.5 hours at the operator's price of A$160 adult, A$110 child (5 to 14). It includes canapes and a fruit platter, with bar drinks for purchase; the operator's pages are inconsistent on whether a first drink is complimentary, so read the inclusions on the booking page rather than assuming. A cruise of that length, starting ahead of sunset, is the natural candidate for the night before a Staircase evening, or for a Staircase night with a late moonrise.

If you want to look closer at whether the evening stacks up, this site's guide to how long a sunset sail actually runs works through the durations, and the deeper background on the moonrise event itself is in the site's guide to the Staircase and the cruise question.

What Time Is Sunset On The Staircase Nights?

Sunset in Broome falls between about 5:23pm in June and 6:33pm in January, from an approximate solar calculation for the 15th of each month. These are approximate sunset times, not departure times; every cruise leaves earlier, and the booking confirmation gives the actual pickup time.

Visit Broome publishes no official monthly sunset table, so the figures here come from a NOAA solar calculation for Broome, accurate to about plus or minus 2 minutes, in Australian Western Standard Time. The official calculators, if you need precision for a photo plan, are Geoscience Australia and the Bureau of Meteorology. For Staircase planning the pattern is what matters: sunsets sit early, around 5:23pm to 5:46pm, across the whole March-to-October Staircase window, while moonrise slides between roughly 5.54pm and 8.38pm. On the early-moonrise nights the two events nearly touch; on the late ones you have two hours or more of twilight between them.

The pairing logic falls out of the two tables together. Take May 21, 2027: sunset about 5:26pm, moonrise 5.54pm. That is a compressed evening, and a cruise that night would put you on the water through both events, with the moonrise watched from the boat rather than the flats, which is a different experience from Town Beach. Now take September 17: sunset about 5:46pm, moonrise 6.52pm, a full hour of dusk in between, enough for a shorter cruise to finish and for you to be standing at Town Beach with time to spare. The site's month-by-month breakdown of sunset times across the year extends this table.

Do not read the sunset column as the operators' schedule. No operator prints a departure clock time; each states that its sailings depart ahead of sunset, and the exact pickup time arrives with the booking confirmation. The courtesy buses that most products run from accommodation come first, so a "sunset cruise" evening starts well before the sun gets low.

Tides, Visibility And Why Some Staircase Nights Are Better

The Kimberley Coast has the biggest tides in the southern hemisphere, with up to about 10 metres between high and low water, and the Staircase needs the flats exposed at moonrise. No operator or authority publishes a tide-by-event rule, so visibility varies with weather, tides, sunset and moonrise.

The tide is the hidden variable in every Staircase plan. The effect needs wet, exposed mudflats catching the moonlight, and Roebuck Bay's enormous tidal range is what makes those flats, and the staircase, possible. But the sources stop there: nobody publishes a rule that says "the Staircase works best on tides below X metres", and no cruise operator states how tides change a boarding or a departure. What you can do is check the tide yourself. Visit Broome publishes Bureau of Meteorology tide table PDFs for 2026 and 2027 on its tides page, so before you lock in a night, look up where the tide will sit at the published moonrise time.

The same tide tables open other doors in the same evening. At Gantheaume Point, per Visit Broome, the dinosaur footprints show on tides under 2.16 metres and the Catalina flying-boat wrecks under 0.86 metres. Gantheaume Point is also a named landmark on the cruise routes, so a low-tide Staircase day can pair a daytime footprint visit with an evening on the water and the moonrise after. The site's longer treatment of how tides interact with evening cruises covers the practical side.

Weather is the second variable, and it is stated honestly by the source: visibility varies with weather, tides, sunset and moonrise. Cloud on the eastern horizon kills the moonrise; a late wet-season storm can do the same in March. Operators likewise cancel for weather and low numbers, with Broome Whale Watching and Broome Tours offering reschedule or refund, so a Staircase-night cruise and the moonrise itself can each fail independently. Build one spare evening into the plan if the trip allows.

Planning The Evening: Markets, Town Beach And The Cruise

The published plan is straightforward: markets at Town Beach on Hamersley Street run 4pm to 8pm on selected Staircase dates, the best viewing is the Town Beach (Guwarri) precinct, and a sunset cruise can fill the hours before a late moonrise. No cruise product includes or returns for the moonrise.

Work the evening backwards from the moonrise time in the 2027 table. On an early moonrise, say May 21 at 5.54pm, the evening is short: skip the cruise that night, arrive at Town Beach before 5.30pm, and take the cruise on another evening of the trip. On a mid or late moonrise, say July 20 at 6.56pm or October 17 at 7.29pm, there is room for the markets from late afternoon, and on the latest moonrises, an 8pm-plus rise in April, June, August, September or October, a sunset cruise can realistically finish in time to walk or ride to Town Beach for the main event, though only the return time on your booking confirmation can confirm that.

For the cruise half of the evening, the two canape products are the closest in shape. Beside Broome Tours' Iconic Catamaran Sunset Cruise at A$160 adult, Broome Whale Watching's Sunset Cruise With Canapes And Transfers runs about 3.5 hours at the operator's price of A$170 adult, A$99 child (2 to 14), with a family of 4 at A$498, which the operator's page says saves A$40. It carries a rating of 4.2 across 11 reviews, includes complimentary Mediterranean canapes and boards in Roebuck Bay from the beach via the amphibious transfer vessel, with the courtesy bus from accommodation first. Its cancellation terms are strict at the edges: no refund inside 48 hours of departure, and groups of 4 or more need a week's notice to change, so a Staircase-linked booking deserves care with dates.

Both run about 3.5 hours, long enough to be on the water as the light fades, though neither stretches to 4.5 hours like the whale-season cruises. Whether you want to see the Staircase from the flats or simply let the moon come up while you graze, the canape cruises cover the trade. The site's comparison of the bookable cruises works through it.

Practical notes for the shore half: no distance, drive time or parking detail for Broome is stated in the sources, so plan the Town Beach leg with your accommodation or map. Bring what the event needs rather than what a cruise needs: the markets run 4pm to 8pm on selected dates only, not every Staircase night, so check the events listing for your specific evening.

Which Month Should You Target In 2027?

For pairing a cruise with the Staircase, the late-moonrise months work hardest: April 24, June 22, September 19 and October 18 all rise after 8pm, leaving a full cruise plus travel time. May 21 rises at 5.54pm and effectively rules a cruise out on the same night.

Each month's cluster has its own character, and the table below reads the two published datasets against each other: the moonrise times and the approximate sunset times. Treat it as planning logic from stated figures, not as an operator promise.

Two cautions sit under that table. First, do not treat the cruise seasons as matching the Staircase window automatically: each operator states its own, from Broome Whale Watching's dolphin sunset cruise running March to June and September to December, to Broome Tours cruising April to early December. Second, August and September carry a bonus that the other months do not: it is whale season, when the region's humpbacks, which Visit Broome describes as the world's largest population, winter in Kimberley waters. The site's guide to whale-season evening cruises covers the two bookable options, the Whale Watching And Sunset Cruise and the Small-Group Whale Watching Sunset Cruise; no sighting is ever guaranteed.

If the trip has flexibility, a useful pattern is to book the cruise for the first night of a Staircase cluster and hold the second night for the moonrise itself: the moon is one night off full, the moonrise comes 40 to 50 minutes later, and you get both halves of the evening without rushing between them. Travellers weighing the whole question of value first may prefer the site's take on whether a sunset cruise is worth it in Broome before committing dates.

Beyond the calendar, the honest summary is this: the Staircase is free, public and watched from the shore; the cruises are paid, bookable and watched from the water; and the published 2027 dates let you set one beside the other with an hour or two of slack in most months. Fix the moonrise first, then fit the cruise around it, and read the terms on the listing you actually book, because each operator's cancellation window is its own. For everything the moon itself does to the bay, Broome Sunset Cruises keeps the seasonal detail in one place.

Common Questions About Staircase To The Moon Dates