Bitcoin halving countdown: about 90,000 blocks to go
The next halving lands at block 1,050,000, when the reward per block drops from 3.125 BTC to 1.5625. Here is where the chain is right now — and what the cut actually does to the people securing it.
Live from the chain tip. The date is an estimate and moves with hashrate.
Bitcoin has no calendar. Every 210,000 blocks the reward paid to miners is cut in half, and that is the entire schedule — written in 2009, unchanged since, and enforced by every node on the network. The next cut happens at block 1,050,000. With the chain tip somewhere around 960,000, roughly 90,000 blocks stand between now and then.
At ten minutes a block that is about 625 days, which points at April 2028. Treat that date as a moving estimate rather than a fact. Blocks do not arrive on a metronome: when hashrate grows, they come faster and the halving pulls earlier; when miners power down, they slow and it drifts later. The difficulty adjustment nudges the average back toward ten minutes every 2,016 blocks, which is why the estimate wobbles by days rather than months.
What actually changes. The block reward has two parts: the subsidy, which halves, and transaction fees, which do not. Today a miner who finds a block collects 3.125 BTC plus whatever fees the block carries. After the halving the subsidy is 1.5625 BTC and the fees are untouched. So the headline "revenue halves" is only true when fees round to nothing — which, for most of the last two years, they nearly have.
That is the part worth sitting with if you mine. A halving does not raise your power bill or make your machines less efficient; it removes half the revenue side of the equation overnight, at a stroke, on a date you can see coming. Every rig whose break-even electricity price sits just above the current market becomes unprofitable the moment the subsidy drops, unless price or fees rise to compensate. You can put your own numbers through our mining profitability calculator and then halve the hashprice figure to see where your machine lands — that is the crudest useful version of the exercise.
Historically the network absorbs it the same way each time: the least efficient hardware switches off, hashrate dips, difficulty follows it down, and the miners still running earn more per unit of work than they did the week before. It is a brutal but effective sorting mechanism, and it is the same one we watched play out in miniature during this summer's hashrate plateau.
On price. Every halving cycle produces confident forecasts, and it is worth being plain: the schedule has been public for seventeen years. Nothing about April 2028 is new information to anyone. Supply issuance does fall, and that is a genuine change to the asset's economics — but four previous halvings is four data points, not a pattern you can trade with confidence. Anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.
THE FULL SCHEDULE
Every halving so far, and the next two
BLOCK
DATE
SUBSIDY
NEW BTC / DAY
0
Jan 2009
50
7,200
210,000
Nov 2012
25
3,600
420,000
Jul 2016
12.5
1,800
630,000
May 2020
6.25
900
840,000
Apr 2024
3.125
450
1,050,000
Apr 2028 (est.)
1.5625
225
1,260,000
2032 (est.)
0.78125
112.5
Dates before 2028 are historical; later rows are block-schedule estimates · Chart: Bitcoin Almanack
WHY IT MATTERS
The halving is the only thing about bitcoin's monetary policy that is genuinely fixed — no committee votes on it, no one can delay it, and it happens whether or not the price cooperates. For miners it is a scheduled revenue cliff to plan capital around. For everyone else it is the clearest demonstration that the supply schedule is a rule, not a promise.
Frequently asked questions
When is the next bitcoin halving?
At block height 1,050,000, currently estimated for April 2028. There is no calendar date in Bitcoin — the halving happens on a block schedule, and the date moves as hashrate changes the average time between blocks.
How many blocks are left until the halving?
Roughly 90,000 as of late July 2026, from a chain tip near block 960,000. Blocks arrive about every ten minutes on average, so the count falls by around 144 a day. The counter above reads the live chain tip.
What does the block reward drop to?
From 3.125 BTC to 1.5625 BTC per block. Transaction fees are paid on top and are unaffected, so total miner revenue falls by less than half — unless fees are negligible, which lately they often are.
Why does the halving date keep moving?
Because every estimate assumes ten-minute blocks. Faster blocks pull the date earlier, slower blocks push it later, and difficulty adjusts every 2,016 blocks to drag the average back toward ten minutes.
Does the halving make the price go up?
It reduces new supply, which is a real change to issuance. But the schedule has been public since 2009, so it is not new information to the market. Four previous halvings is four data points — not a pattern to bank on.
SOURCES & DATA
Block counts update live; estimated dates are derived from a ten-minute average and will move. See our editorial process.
Aisha Bennett
Mining & Hardware Editor. Covers ASIC efficiency, home-mining economics and noise, working from spec documentation and operator field reports.