Bitcoin halving countdown: the next halving at block 1,050,000

What is the Bitcoin halving?

Roughly every four years, at fixed 210,000-block intervals, the amount of new bitcoin created with each block is cut in half. That event is the halving, still called the halvening in older corners of the internet. It is written into the consensus rules that every node enforces, so no miner, company or government can delay it, skip it or vote it away.

Miners earn two things for a block: the block subsidy of brand new bitcoin, and the fees paid by that block's transactions. Together they make up the block reward, paid out in the block's coinbase transaction. Only the subsidy halves. Fees are set by demand for block space, and over the decades they are designed to take over as the network's security budget.

For the precise definition and the terms people mix it up with, read the glossary entry on the halving.

Why the halving matters

Most money is issued at the discretion of an institution. Bitcoin's issuance is a published schedule: 3.125 BTC per block this epoch, 1.5625 BTC after block 1,050,000, halving again every 210,000 blocks until the subsidy reaches zero around 2140.

The 21 million supply cap is not a separate rule; it is the sum of this halving series. Fifty bitcoin per block for the first 210,000 blocks, then 25, then 12.5, and so on: add every epoch together and the total lands just under 21 million coins.

Each halving also cuts the growth rate of supply roughly in half. New coins currently arrive at about 0.82% of existing supply per year, and after the next halving that falls to about 0.40%. The popular stock-to-flow model is built on this scarcity; treat it as a narrative, not a law. Nothing in the protocol makes the price rise at a halving.

When is the next Bitcoin halving?

As of 2026-08-18 the chain is at block 963,000, leaving 87,000 blocks to go. At the recent average of 10 min 19 sec per block, block 1,050,000 lands around May 2, 2028. The countdown above re-anchors to the live block height in your browser, so it drifts a little as real blocks arrive; without JavaScript it shows the projection from our last data sync. Extrapolating a recent average that far is a model, not a promise: if block times return to the 10 minute target, the real date lands earlier than this estimate.

Blocks target 10 minutes but rarely average it: when hashrate grows, blocks arrive faster until the next difficulty adjustment catches up, once every 2,016 blocks. Compounded across an epoch, that error is why every past halving arrived early against a naive four-year spacing, by three weeks in 2024 and over four months in 2016, and why halving dates differ between sites. Time zones add another day of disagreement, so we quote UTC everywhere.

Halving date calculator

The date is only as good as the block time behind it. Pick your own and watch the estimate move by weeks.

Bitcoin's supply curve

About 95.6% of all bitcoin already exists. At the current block height the schedule issues roughly 450 BTC per day, each halving cuts that in half, and the total creeps toward the cap without ever quite touching it. The steep part of the curve is history; everything from here is the long flattening.

What the halving means for miners

For everyone holding bitcoin the halving changes nothing. For miners it cuts the subsidy side of revenue in half overnight: hashprice, the industry's revenue-per-terahash yardstick, drops the moment the block arrives unless price or fees rise to meet it.

That squeeze is why efficiency decides who survives: a machine doing 30 joules per terahash keeps earning where a 40 J/TH machine goes dark, and each cycle retires another generation of hardware. Network hash rate dipped after the 2020 and 2024 halvings and recovered within months; after 2012 and 2016 it simply kept climbing. Our mining guide explains the economics and compares current machines by efficiency.

The halving changes miner pay, not how you buy bitcoin

A halving asks nothing of you and touches nothing you own. If the fixed issuance schedule is part of why you want bitcoin, the practical step is simply owning some; timing a purchase around the event is speculation, not strategy.