Bitcoin difficulty adjustment countdown
Current height: block 975,088 of 975,744 (epoch started at block 973,728) · updated November 8, 2026
How to cite this figure: “Next Bitcoin difficulty adjustment: −5.3% estimated at block 975,744 (calculated November 8, 2026, 19:07 UTC, with the chain at block 975,088, 656 blocks before it).” NodeWitness, https://nodewitness.com/en/bitcoin-difficulty-adjustment/
Chapter 16 of Read the Chain, our free PDF guide (in Spanish), works through difficulty adjustments and hashrate from scratch.
What is the difficulty adjustment, and why does it exist?
Bitcoin targets one block every 10 minutes on average, but the real hashrate mining the network keeps changing. Every 2,016 blocks (roughly two weeks), the protocol looks at how long that batch of blocks actually took and adjusts the mining difficulty up or down so the pace returns to ~10 minutes per block. It's the mechanism that keeps Bitcoin's issuance schedule (and its halvings) on a predictable rhythm regardless of how much hashrate joins or leaves the network.
How the estimate is calculated
We reproduce Bitcoin Core's actual formula (CalculateNextWorkRequired): the real timespan of a closed adjustment period is the time of its last block minus the time of its first block, measured over 2,015 intervals between the period's 2,016 blocks, not 2,016 (a historical quirk of the reference implementation, not a bug in this page). That timespan is capped to at most 4x longer or 4x shorter than the 2-week target, and the new difficulty is old difficulty × 1,209,600 seconds ÷ that (possibly capped) timespan. For an epoch still in progress, we extrapolate: we take the real average time per block observed so far this epoch (currently 10.6 minutes/block, vs. the 10-minute target) and project it across the full period.
With 67.5% of this epoch already mined (1,360 of 2,016 blocks), this estimate is reasonably stable, as a rough and informal guide, but it's still an extrapolation of the pace observed so far, not a fact until the period closes at block 975,744.
Current difficulty and block pace
Current difficulty: 148.36T. Real average pace this epoch: 10.6 minutes per block (target: 10 minutes), implying an estimated network hashrate of roughly 1,005.35 EH/s.
Past adjustments
| Date | Block | Difficulty | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-29 | 973,728 | 148.36T | +5.54% |
| 2026-10-16 | 971,712 | 140.58T | +5.92% |
| 2026-10-03 | 969,696 | 132.72T | -0.03% |
| 2026-09-19 | 967,680 | 132.76T | +4.16% |
| 2026-09-05 | 965,664 | 127.45T | +1.31% |
| 2026-08-23 | 963,648 | 125.81T | -1.31% |
| 2026-08-08 | 961,632 | 127.48T | +0.99% |
| 2026-07-25 | 959,616 | 126.23T | -0.74% |
| 2026-07-11 | 957,600 | 127.17T | -5.00% |
| 2026-06-27 | 955,584 | 133.87T | +7.15% |
| 2026-06-14 | 953,568 | 124.93T | -10.09% |
| 2026-05-29 | 951,552 | 138.96T | +1.72% |
The full history, every adjustment since 2009, is on our Bitcoin hashrate chart.
More on our own node
This countdown comes from the same live data as:
- Our own node status and hashrate history
- The halving countdown
- Today's Bitcoin fees, which move with mining pace
Frequently asked questions
When is the next Bitcoin difficulty adjustment?
Estimated for 13 November 2026, at block 975,744. As of November 8, 2026, 656 blocks remain. The block is exact; the date depends on the real mining pace.
Will Bitcoin difficulty go up or down next time?
Based on the real block pace observed so far this epoch, difficulty is estimated to change by −5.3% (from 148.36T to roughly 140.52T). This estimate is reasonably stable at this point in the epoch, though never certain until the period closes.
What is the Bitcoin difficulty adjustment, and why does it exist?
Roughly every two weeks (every 2,016 blocks), Bitcoin measures how fast those blocks were actually mined and adjusts mining difficulty so the pace returns to about 10 minutes per block, regardless of how much hashrate is mining the network.
Is there a limit to how much the difficulty can change in one adjustment?
Yes. Bitcoin Core clamps the measured length of each period to between a quarter of and four times the two-week target, so a single adjustment can at most multiply the difficulty by 4 or divide it by 4. If hashrate moved by more than that, it would take several adjustments to get back to 10-minute blocks.
How is this estimate different from the halving countdown?
The halving is a fixed block count with no other variable, only the date is estimated. The difficulty adjustment additionally requires calculating a real formula (the actual timespan of mined blocks, capped and applied to the current difficulty), so both the date and the percentage change are estimates that get more reliable as the epoch progresses.
This page describes a protocol mechanism; it is not financial advice and makes no price predictions of any kind.
Last updated: November 8, 2026