How Many Moons Does Each Planet Have? Current Confirmed Counts
Solar System · Moon counts · Updated 2026-07-22
As of 22 July 2026, Saturn leads with 293 confirmed moons, followed by Jupiter with 115, Uranus with 29, Neptune with 16, Mars with 2, and Earth with 1. Mercury and Venus have none. That is 456 confirmed planetary moons in total, or 465 once you add the nine moons of the four IAU-recognised dwarf planets that have any: Pluto, Eris, Haumea and Makemake.
Those numbers move, which is why almost every page you find disagrees with the next one. This guide gives the count with a date attached, separates moons that are merely confirmed from moons that have been formally numbered and named by the IAU, and explains why Saturn's total nearly doubled in a single announcement.
Moons of every planet: the current table
| Body | Confirmed moons | Named moons | Confirmed but still unnamed | Largest moon (diameter) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mercury | 0 | 0 | 0 | None |
| Venus | 0 | 0 | 0 | None |
| Earth | 1 | 1 | 0 | The Moon (3,475 km) |
| Mars | 2 | 2 | 0 | Phobos (~22.5 km mean) |
| Jupiter | 115 | 57 | 58, all irregular satellites | Ganymede (5,268 km) |
| Saturn | 293 | 65 | 228, all irregular satellites | Titan (5,150 km) |
| Uranus | 29 | 27 | 2 (S/2023 U 1, S/2025 U 1) | Titania (1,578 km) |
| Neptune | 16 | 14 | 2 (S/2002 N 5, S/2021 N 1) | Triton (2,707 km) |
| Pluto (dwarf) | 5 | 5 | 0 | Charon (1,212 km) |
| Eris (dwarf) | 1 | 1 | 0 | Dysnomia (~615 km, +60/-50) |
| Haumea (dwarf) | 2 | 2 | 0 | Hi'iaka (~320 km, estimated) |
| Makemake (dwarf) | 1 | 0 | 1 (S/2015 (136472) 1) | S/2015 (136472) 1 (~175 km, estimated) |
| Planets, total | 456 | 166 | 290 | Ganymede |
| Planets + the five IAU dwarf planets | 465 | - | - | Ganymede |
Read the middle columns carefully, because this is where competing pages fall apart. A moon is confirmed once its orbit has been determined well enough for the Minor Planet Center to announce it. It is numbered only later, once the orbit is secure across multiple oppositions, at which point it gets a Roman numeral (Jupiter LXXIII, Saturn LXVII). It is named later still, when the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature approves a name from the right mythological pool. Saturn currently has 293 confirmed moons but only 65 names, so roughly four out of five Saturnian moons are still provisional designations like S/2020 S 27. Jupiter is in the same position on a smaller scale: 115 confirmed, 57 named, 58 still carrying designations.
Why Saturn overtook Jupiter
Nothing new formed. Survey telescopes simply got good enough to see moons a few kilometres across at magnitude 25 to 27. The 2023 and 2025 Saturn hauls came from Edward Ashton, Brett Gladman, Mike Alexandersen and Jean-Marc Petit using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope with a shift-and-stack technique: take many long exposures, shift each frame to track Saturn's motion across the sky, then add them together so a faint moon that would be invisible in any single frame accumulates into a detection.
| Date | Announcement | Resulting count |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 2019 | 20 Saturnian irregulars (Sheppard, Subaru) | Saturn 82, ahead of Jupiter's 79 |
| Feb 2023 | 12 Jovian moons added at the MPC | Jupiter retakes the lead at 92 |
| May 2023 | 62 Saturnian moons (Ashton, CFHT) | Saturn 145, lead regained decisively |
| 11 Mar 2025 | 128 Saturnian moons in a single MPC batch | Saturn 274 |
| Jul 2026 | Continued MPC announcements | Saturn 293, Jupiter 115 |
Every one of the 128 moons announced on 11 March 2025 is an irregular satellite: small, distant, steeply inclined, and mostly retrograde. They are collision debris from a handful of captured parent bodies that shattered, which is why they cluster into families like the Norse, Inuit and Gallic groups. There is no physical reason the count should stop at 293. Push the detection limit down another kilometre and Saturn plausibly has thousands.
Why Mercury and Venus have zero
Two reasons, and both come down to being close to the Sun. First, the Hill sphere - the volume in which a planet's gravity beats the Sun's - is tiny for an inner planet, so there is very little stable real estate to hold a moon. Second, solar tides drag on any orbit inside that small region, so a captured object either spirals in or gets stripped away over billions of years. Venus may have had a moon after an early impact; the leading model has it re-impacting or escaping. Earth keeps its Moon because the Moon is unusually large and formed close in from a giant impact, not because Earth's orbital neighbourhood is friendlier.
The count changes. A daily fact feed keeps up.. StarQuest's Solar System category is one of ten curated categories delivering a fresh cosmos fact every day, on your Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets and on Apple Watch. Tap Favorite on the ones worth keeping and they land in your own saved collection, so the moon facts you actually use are one swipe away instead of one stale memory away. Download StarQuest: Daily Cosmos Facts on the App Store.
How to quote a moon count without being wrong
- Always attach a date. "Saturn has 293 moons as of July 2026" ages honestly. "Saturn has 293 moons" will be wrong within a year or two.
- Say which number you mean. Confirmed, numbered, or named. A source claiming Saturn has 63 moons is not wrong, it is counting names.
- Cite the Minor Planet Center, not a news article. The MPC is the IAU body that issues the announcements; press coverage lags and rounds.
- Treat dwarf planet moon diameters as estimates. Only Charon has been resolved by a spacecraft. Dysnomia, Hi'iaka and Makemake's moon come from thermal and occultation modelling with real error bars.
- Do not add asteroid moons to a planet total. They are a separate catalogue and they are the main reason two "total moons" figures can differ by 400.
Facts with a shelf life, handled daily
Moon counts are the clearest example of astronomy facts that expire. The number you memorised in school was 62 for Saturn; it is now 293, and the next survey run will move it again. StarQuest is built for exactly this: a daily fact from ten categories including Solar System, curated collections from Essential through Recent Discoveries, widgets that put the fact in front of you without opening anything, and Favorites for the ones you want to keep. Bookmark this table for the numbers, and let the daily feed cover the part that keeps changing.
Frequently asked questions
Which planet has the most moons?
Saturn, with 293 confirmed moons as of July 2026, ahead of Jupiter's 115. Saturn took the lead permanently in May 2023 and extended it on 11 March 2025 when the Minor Planet Center announced 128 new Saturnian moons in one batch.
How many moons does Saturn have in total?
293 confirmed as of mid-2026. Of those, 65 have IAU-approved names; the remaining 228, all irregular satellites, still carry provisional designations such as S/2020 S 27. Pages quoting 274 are citing the March 2025 figure, and pages quoting 145 are citing May 2023.
How many moons are there in the solar system altogether?
465 around the eight planets and the five IAU dwarf planets, of which 456 orbit the planets themselves. NASA's broader figure of more than 891, dated March 2025, additionally counts more than 470 moons of asteroids, trans-Neptunian objects and unofficial dwarf planets, which are catalogued separately; refresh its planetary component to today's counts and the all-in total is nearer 935.
Why do Mercury and Venus have no moons?
Both sit deep in the Sun's gravity well, so their Hill spheres are too small to hold a satellite for long, and solar tides destabilise anything captured. Venus may have had a moon after an early giant impact, but models have it re-impacting or escaping rather than surviving.