How to Find the Qibla Direction Anywhere (Without Guesswork)

Facing the Qibla — the direction of the Ka’bah in Makkah — is a condition of the prayer: “So turn your face toward al-Masjid al-Haram, and wherever you are, turn your faces toward it” (Quran 2:144). At home you probably know which wall to face. In a hotel, an office, a park or a new city, you need a reliable way to work it out. This guide explains how the direction is calculated and gives five practical methods.

What “the Qibla” means geometrically

The Earth is a sphere, so the Qibla is defined as the direction of the shortest path over the Earth’s surface to the Ka’bah — a great circle. That is why the answer is sometimes surprising on a flat map.

The direction is usually given as a bearing: degrees clockwise from true north. 0° is north, 90° east, 180° south and 270° west.

Qibla bearings for major cities

Calculated with our Qibla tool from each city’s coordinates:

City	Qibla bearing	Rough direction	Distance to Makkah
London	119°	south-east	4,794 km
New York	58.5°	north-east	10,306 km
Toronto	54.6°	north-east	10,496 km
Casablanca	93.7°	almost due east	4,824 km
Lagos	63.3°	east-north-east	4,251 km
Cairo	136°	south-east	1,287 km
Istanbul	151.6°	south-south-east	2,405 km
Riyadh	243.8°	west-south-west	790 km
Dubai	258.2°	west-south-west	1,631 km
Karachi	267.7°	just south of west	2,800 km
Delhi	266.6°	just south of west	3,835 km
Kuala Lumpur	292.5°	west-north-west	6,974 km
Jakarta	295.2°	west-north-west	7,920 km
Tokyo	293°	west-north-west	9,472 km
Sydney	277.5°	just north of west	13,236 km

Each city page in our prayer times section shows the bearing with a compass needle.

Why North America faces north-east

This is the question we hear most. On a typical world map, Makkah (21.4° N) is south of New York (40.7° N), so it seems the Qibla should point south-east. But flat maps distort distances. On a globe, the shortest path from New York to Makkah heads north-east, crossing the Atlantic and southern Europe before curving south to Arabia — just as flights from New York to the Middle East fly over northern regions.

Some older mosques in North America were built facing south-east, following the flat-map direction. Most communities now use the great-circle bearing, which is the method used by scholars and astronomers for centuries. Muslim astronomers such as al-Biruni calculated Qibla directions using spherical trigonometry over a thousand years ago.

Method 1: a compass and the bearing

1. Look up your city’s bearing (table above or your city’s prayer page).
2. Hold the compass flat, away from metal, phones and cars.
3. Turn until the needle points to north (N).
4. Face the bearing: for London, turn to 119° — a little more than halfway from east to south.

Watch out for magnetic declination. A compass points to magnetic north, which can differ from true north by several degrees depending on location and year. In the UK and much of the Middle East the difference is currently small (a few degrees at most), well within the tolerance scholars accept. In parts of North America it can exceed 10°; check the local declination online and adjust if you want precision.

Method 2: your phone

Phone compasses use the magnetometer plus GPS, and most Qibla apps correct for declination automatically. For a good reading:

• Calibrate by moving the phone in a figure-of-eight.
• Keep it flat and away from metal, laptops and car dashboards.
• Cross-check with a second method once in a new location.

Method 3: the sun at a known time

The sun gives a reliable reference if you know roughly where it is:

• At solar noon (the time of Dhuhr), the sun is due south in the northern hemisphere (outside the tropics) and due north in the southern hemisphere.
• At sunrise and sunset it is roughly east and west — exactly so only near the equinoxes.

So at Dhuhr time in London, face the sun (south) and turn about 61° to your left (towards east) to reach 119°.

Method 4: when the sun is directly over the Ka’bah

Twice a year, the sun passes directly overhead in Makkah at solar noon — around 27–28 May at about 12:18 Makkah time (09:18 UTC), and around 15–16 July at about 12:27 Makkah time (09:27 UTC). At that moment, anywhere in the world where the sun is visible, facing the sun means facing the Qibla, and the shadow of a vertical stick points directly away from it.

This old technique (rasd al-qiblah) is used by many communities to check mosque orientations. In Southeast Asia, where the moment falls in the late afternoon, some authorities announce it every year so people can check their homes.

Method 5: local landmarks

In most cities the simplest method is to ask: mosques, prayer rooms in airports and shopping centres, and many hotel rooms in Muslim-majority countries show the Qibla direction. Once you know it, note a fixed landmark — a building or road — that lines up with it.

Checking the direction of a home or prayer room

If you are setting up a prayer space at home, at work or in a new mosque, it is worth checking the direction carefully once:

1. Find the bearing for your exact address — our city pages are accurate to the city; for a specific address, any map tool showing the great-circle line to Makkah will do.
2. Use two methods — a phone compass and the sun at solar noon, or a phone compass and a map aligned with the building’s walls.
3. Mark the direction permanently — a small sticker on the ceiling, a line on the floor, or the alignment of a prayer mat or rug.
4. On the twice-yearly dates when the sun is over the Ka’bah, check a vertical shadow to confirm.

Many communities are surprised to find that a building that “faces the Qibla” is off by 10–20°. Scholars generally say prayers already prayed remain valid; adjusting the lines of the prayer rows going forward is enough.

How precise does it need to be?

The majority of scholars hold that for someone who cannot see the Ka’bah, the requirement is to face its general direction (jihat al-Ka’bah), not its exact point. A hadith states: “What is between the east and the west is a qiblah” (Sunan al-Tirmidhi 342) — said in Madinah, where the Ka’bah lies to the south. Scholars take this to mean a reasonable range of deviation is forgiven.

So:

• Do your best with the tools you have.
• Small errors — a few degrees, or even more when you have no means of knowing — do not invalidate the prayer.
• If you find out afterwards that you prayed in the wrong direction after making a reasonable effort, most scholars say you do not need to repeat the prayer.

Special situations

• On a plane or train: for obligatory prayers, face the Qibla at the start if you can; if the vehicle turns, continue. Voluntary prayers may be prayed in the direction of travel, as the Prophet ﷺ did on his mount (Sahih al-Bukhari 1094).
• At the poles or in space: scholars have discussed these cases, generally advising the direction of the shortest path or, failing that, any direction.
• Inside the Masjid al-Haram: face the Ka’bah itself.

Summary

• The Qibla is the great-circle direction to the Ka’bah — e.g. 119° from London, 58° from New York, 268° from Karachi.
• From North America it points north-east, not south-east.
• Use a compass with the bearing, a calibrated phone, the sun, or the dates when the sun is over the Ka’bah (around 27–28 May and 15–16 July).
• Facing the general direction is sufficient; do your best and don’t worry about small errors.