Enjoy the fireflies as they
dance in the dark
Follow the fireflies, and remember, lower your lights :)
the map
Follow the fireflies, and remember, lower your lights :)
A firefly's season rolls across the world like a slow tide of light, south first, then north, then the other hemisphere. Drag through the months to watch the wave, or click your country to see when it's your turn.
Every glowing dot on this map is a real firefly that someone saw and wrote down. You can add yours. Spot a firefly on a summer night, log it in a citizen-science app, and through GBIF your sighting becomes part of this map, and part of the science that helps protect them. The more eyes on the dark, the truer the map becomes.
Find a firefly on a warm, dark evening.
Record it on Waarneming.nl or iNaturalist, with a photo if you can.
Through GBIF it joins the map, and the science, days later.
Once, the dark was full of small lamps. On summer nights the fields blinked with a language older than ours, a slow morse of longing, each spark a creature calling out: be here, be near, be mine.
We called them fireflies, glow-worms, lightning bugs. Children caught them in jars and let them go again. Poets mistook them for fallen stars.
But we have been busy lighting the world. Streetlamps, screens, headlights, the amber haze that hangs over every city, our glow now drowns out theirs. A firefly speaks in light; when the night never truly falls, its message is lost in the noise, and two fireflies that might have found each other simply… don't. Fewer sparks. Then fewer still.
This was never really a story about insects. It is a story about the dark, and what we lose when we refuse to let it fall.
followthefireflies is a small map of a large disappearance. It shows where, across the world, the fireflies are dancing right now, and when the wave of their season will reach you. Watch it move from south to north, from one hemisphere to the other, like a tide made of light.
And when the map says it's your turn: go outside. Turn off the porch light. Let your eyes adjust. Give the dark back, just for one hour.
Follow the fireflies. And remember, lower your lights.
We don't track live bugs. A firefly's mating season depends on latitude: the south peaks first, the north weeks later. We turn that into a wave of light you can watch roll across the map, month by month.
Every glowing dot is a real observation from GBIF,thousands of people worldwide logging where they saw fireflies. We treat it as living proof, not gospel, because some countries simply have more watchers than others.
Click your country to see how many days until the peak and the best window after dusk, usually from the end of twilight to a few hours after sunset, brightest around 22:00–23:00. Then turn off the porch light and look up.
The season timing on this map is a model based on latitude, not a forecast. Real firefly activity shifts with local weather, habitat and species, so please treat it as a gentle guide rather than a guarantee. Sighting counts and glowing dots come from GBIF citizen-science records and show where people report fireflies, not everywhere they actually live; many regions are simply under-recorded. Light pollution is one of several recognised pressures on fireflies, alongside habitat loss and pesticide use. followthefireflies is an independent, non-commercial project, made to help people notice the dark, and protect it.