While sleep quality and duration have been related to cardiovascular endpoints, little is known about the association between sleep duration and incident atrial fibrillation (AF). Hence, we prospectively examined the association between sleep duration and incident AF in a cohort of 18,755 US male physicians. Self-reported sleep duration was ascertained during 2002 annual follow-up questionnaire. Incident AF was ascertained through yearly follow-up questionnaires. Cox regression was used to estimate relative risks of AF. The average age at baseline was 67.7 (+8.6) years. During a mean follow up of 6.9 (±2.1) years, 1,468 cases of AF occurred. Using 7 hours of sleep as the reference group, multivariable adjusted hazard ratios (95% CI) for AF were 1.06 (0.92–1.22), 1.0 (ref), and 1.13 (1.00–1.27) from the lowest to the highest category of sleep duration (p for trend 0.26), respectively. In a secondary analysis, there was no evidence of effect modification by adiposity (p interaction =0.69); however, prevalent sleep apnea modified the relation of sleep duration with AF (p interaction =0.01): from the highest to the lowest category of sleep duration, multivariable adjusted hazard ratios (95% CI) for AF were 2.26 (1.26–4.05), 1.0 (ref), and 1.34 (0.73–2.46) for those with prevalent sleep apnea and 1.01 (0.87–1.16), 1.0 (ref), and 1.12 (0.99–1.27) for those without sleep apnea, respectively. Our data showed a modestly elevated risk of AF with long sleep duration among US male physicians. Furthermore, shorter sleep duration was associated with a higher risk of AF in people with prevalent sleep apnea.