Significance Most physiological processes exhibit circadian oscillations, which are synchronized by a central pacemaker located in the hypothalamic suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). For this pacemaker to be biologically relevant, it must be entrained with external environmental cues such as the daily light/dark cycle. At present, details of how photic information is relayed from the retina to the SCN remain unclear. Using an array of genetic mouse lines, we found that the major peptidergic SCN neurons receive direct retinal input and that a single intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cell (ipRGC) bilaterally targets the SCN and sends axonal collaterals to several non-SCN regions. Together, our results suggest that the retina provides multifaceted synaptic inputs to the brain to mediate proper photic inputs to coordinately influence non-image–forming visual functions.