You have to win a lottery to attend this winter solstice event

In a few weeks’ time, just 38 lottery winners — chosen from 16,000 global applicants — will stand in the darkness of Newgrange’s 5,200-year-old chamber in Ireland’s Boyne Valley in anticipation of an astronomical magic trick. For 17 minutes during a narrow five-day window around the winter solstice in December, a precise beam of light will connect them to the astronomical mastery of the monument’s Neolithic builders.

Each year, as the solstice sun rises over County Meath, a narrow beam of light pierces through a small stone opening above the tomb’s entrance — a ‘roof-box’ designed to capture the first rays of the midwinter sun — and travels 19 metres along the passage, illuminating the chamber’s intricate megalithic art and flooding the space with gold before fading as the sun climbs. This extraordinary calibration was engineered more than 5,000 years ago and is one of the world’s most remarkable examples of prehistoric astronomy.

Engineering the impossible

Predating both Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids of Giza, Newgrange was finished around 3200 BCE. Its builders transported massive stones from up to 30 miles away — greywacke slabs from sites near Clogherhead and white quartz cobbles from the Wicklow Mountains — to construct what is a strikingly sophisticated passage tomb.

The finished mound is, at its tallest point, 12 metres high, and stretches 85 metres across, concealing a passage leading to a central chamber topped by a corbelled roof so precisely built that, five millennia later, it still keeps out every drop of water, and has never required repair.

It sits in the Boyne Valley, a landscape dotted with prehistoric monuments, on a low ridge above the River Boyne, which ambles through the valley toward Drogheda and the Irish Sea. The river has drawn communities to its banks for thousands of years: in 2006, the remains of an early medieval Viking ship were discovered during dredging works near Drogheda port. Within a few kilometres of Newgrange are sister monuments Knowth and Dowth, part of the Neolithic complex known as Brú na Bóinne, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1993.

Excavations at Newgrange have revealed human remains alongside Neolithic artifacts such as pendants, stone tools and bone pins, but Newgrange wasn’t simply a burial vault. Evidence suggests it was a ceremonial site where communities honoured their dead and marked the turning of the year. Its Stone Age builders likely intended to celebrate the winter solstice as the beginning of a new cycle — a symbol of life’s victory over death as the darkest days gave way to new light.

But what of the solar alignment? Was this intentional, or a stunning stroke of fortune?

Dr Frank Prendergast, emeritus research fellow at Technological University Dublin, points to several architectural features that appear to confirm deliberate design. The long, narrow passage functions like a telescope aimed at the horizon. The small aperture above the entrance precisely frames the rising sun, while the lintel bears elaborate megalithic art. “No other passage tomb, in Ireland or Northwest Europe, can demonstrate such emphatic evidence of celestial alignment intentionality,” he explains.

While some researchers have questioned the design, most archaeologists agree that the precision of Newgrange demonstrates a remarkable understanding of the sun’s movements, and the builders’ ability to capture them. According to Prendergast, of 136 Irish passage tombs with surviving passages and chambers, only 23 display any alignment of astronomical interest. Most were positioned in relation to other tombs rather than celestial events.

Gatherings across generations

The architectural precision of Newgrange was not only a feat of engineering — it also shaped how communities interacted. Those buried here were not necessarily close relatives; isotope analysis shows they came from across Ireland, like many of the stones. “These were sizeable but dispersed communities, assembling at sites like Newgrange at specific times of the year, including the winter solstice,” explains Jessica Smyth, associate professor at University College Dublin’s School of Archaeology.

Evidence of large-scale feasting reinforces this picture. Neil Carlin, also of UCD, has found deposits of pottery, stone tools and animal bones near the entrance, indicating gathering spots. The feasting menu included pigs (often specially fed on acorns, and slaughtered around the solstice) and cattle, alongside dairy, bread and plants.

For visitors today, the precision of Newgrange’s design is more than a historical curiosity. The lottery system, introduced due to the chamber’s limited capacity, has transformed the winter solstice at Newgrange into an event that mirrors its initial purpose: drawing people from distant places to convene at a monument aligned with celestial movements. Modern lottery winners experience a connection spanning millennia: standing where Neolithic communities once mustered, watching sunlight flood the chamber, they trace the same celestial rhythm that structured many ancient lives.

Carlin notes that gathering like-minded people from far-flung locations echoes the winter solstice in the fourth and third millennia BCE, even if our understanding differs. The lottery is new, but its effect is ancient — ensuring Newgrange continues to draw communities together, inspired by sun, stone and shared wonder.