Data insight · Oct 12, 2026 · 5 min read
The next halving is 79,029 blocks away, and closer to schedule than the last two
Bitcoin's next halving comes at block 1,050,000, and on 11 October 2026 the chain stood 79,029 blocks short of it, with 246,966 coins left to mine at today's reward. After 905 days the clock is running about four and a half days ahead of the ten-minute schedule, closer than in the last two cycles.
The halving is a block, not a date
Bitcoin's reward is cut in half every 210,000 blocks, which the Bitcoin Wiki describes as "approximately four years". The next cut comes at block 1,050,000. Our data section read the chain at block 970,971 on 11 October 2026, which leaves 79,029 blocks to go. What the halving does to a machine's earnings is in our guide; this piece follows the clock.
Each of those blocks still pays 3.125 bitcoin. That makes 246,966 coins left to be mined at today's reward, whatever bitcoin costs. Our supply chart put the coins in existence at 20,096,652 on 11 October. When the reward halves, the Bitcoin Wiki's table puts the supply at 20,343,750, which is 96.9% of the 21 million limit.
905 days in, the clock is four and a half days ahead
Blocks are designed to arrive every ten minutes, so 210,000 of them should take 1,458 days. The last halving was on 20 April 2024. Counting the blocks in our daily series, the chain has produced 130,971 since then, in 905 days, an average of 144.7 a day. A pace of exactly 144 a day would have taken 909.5 days, so the clock is about four and a half days ahead.
The two cycles before it got to the same block count sooner. After the 2016 halving it took 865 days to reach 130,971 blocks, and after the 2020 halving 902. This cycle took 905, the closest to the schedule of the three.
Same number of blocks, and this cycle took longer to mine them than either of the last two.
Earlier halvings came early because hashrate outran difficulty
Dates from the same Bitcoin Wiki table show how far each cycle ran from the 1,458 days of the design. The first cycle, from 28 November 2012 to 9 July 2016, took 1,319 days. The second took 1,402 days, to 11 May 2020, and the third 1,440 days, to 20 April 2024. Each was shorter than designed, by 139, 56 and then 18 days.
The reason is growth. Difficulty is reset every 2,016 blocks to match the hashrate of the last two weeks, so when machines are being added faster than that, blocks run quick until the next reset. Our 30-day average hashrate was 1.5 exahashes a second at the 2016 halving, 116 at the 2020 one and 615 at the 2024 one. The more the network grows in a cycle, the earlier its halving comes.
This cycle is the slow-growth one. The 30-day average to 11 October was 964 exahashes a second, 57% above the halving day, and that growth has bought only four and a half days.
2026 is the slowest year for blocks in our record
Blocks have run behind the design, not ahead, for the past year. 2026 to 11 October has averaged 143.2 blocks a day, the lowest of any year in our daily series, which starts in 2013. The next lowest is 2021 at 144.3. Over the 365 days to 11 October the pace was 143.5.
That is the hashrate that left. When machines switch off, blocks slow until difficulty is cut, which our hashrate chart and the difficulty adjustments record. Machines are coming back now: the pace was 147.5 a day over the last 30 days and 154.6 over the last seven.
Put the remaining 79,029 blocks on each pace and the date moves by two weeks. At the 365-day pace the halving falls on 13 April 2028. At 144 a day it is 11 April. At the last 30 days' pace it is 29 March. All three are arithmetic on a pace that will keep changing, and all three say the same thing: the first half of April 2028, give or take a fortnight.
The coins left are fixed, and a petahash's share is about a quarter of one
The 246,966 coins left at today's reward are fixed by the block count. A faster network does not make the pot larger and a rising price does not make it bigger; it only changes who gets what. A petahash a second of hashrate is a share of the network, and at the 30-day average of 964 exahashes a second that share is one 963,907th. Of 246,966 coins, it comes to 0.256 bitcoin before the halving.
That figure holds the network at its recent size, and the network will not stay there: every exahash added thins each share and brings the halving a little closer. It ignores fees, which have been small, and counts neither machine nor power. What it shows is where the leverage is. The date barely moves, and the share is what a miner controls, by running more hashrate that costs less to keep on.
The pot is counted in blocks, not in days or dollars.
What it means for a miner
The last halving cut the coins a petahash earns by 47%: our hashprice in bitcoin averaged 0.001587 a day in the 30 days to 19 April 2024 and 0.000835 in the 30 days to 19 June. It averaged 0.000484 in the 30 days to 11 October. Halve that and hold the network where it is, and a petahash would earn about 0.000242 a day. The network will not stand still, so read this as arithmetic about the reward and not as a forecast.
The cost of a coin follows the same arithmetic. The most efficient machine we stock, the Bitmain Antminer S23 XP Hyd at 8.9 J/TH, running at our cheapest site that can host it, makes a coin for about $17,900 in electricity against a market price of $83,677 on 12 October. That counts electricity only, at today's hashprice, and leaves out the machine and the pool fee. If the reward halved with nothing else changing, that cost would be about $35,900, still 43% of today's price.
There are 79,029 blocks of full reward left, and a machine switched on now collects its share of every one. The ones that survive the cut are the efficient machines on cheap power, which is why efficiency decides how many halvings a machine survives. Output is never guaranteed, and the clock above will move as hashrate does.
Sources and further reading
- Controlled supply — Bitcoin Wiki, Page read 12 Oct 2026
Disclosure
Firsthand Bitcoin sells and hosts mining hardware, including this machine. No manufacturer, distributor or affiliate programme paid for or reviewed this page and we take no commission on the links above. Historical figures are computed from daily bitcoin price and network hashprice, each day valued at its own prices. Nothing here is investment advice.