Time Zone of a Place

This reference answers one question: what time zone a place is in — a state, a city, a country, a region — and what follows from it. Pick the place or the zone from the list above and hit «Find out»: the page names the zone and its abbreviations, the UTC offset in standard and daylight time, the dates the clocks change this year, and the difference from UTC, from the four US zones and from Moscow.

How Time Zones Work

Everything is counted from UTC, Coordinated Universal Time, which never shifts with the seasons and belongs to no country. A place's zone is its offset from UTC: «UTC+3» means three hours ahead of UTC, «UTC−7» seven hours behind. The offset is not always a whole number of hours: India sits on UTC+5:30 and Nepal on UTC+5:45.

Most zones carry two names and two abbreviations, because the offset changes twice a year: in winter Pacific Time is PST (UTC−8), in summer PDT (UTC−7). The name of the zone itself does not change — PT means «whichever of the two is in force right now». That is why a schedule is safer written in the zone (PT, ET) than in the abbreviation of one state of it.

How to Find a Place's Zone in Three Steps

1. Find the place in the list. States and DC, US cities, Russian regions and cities, Mexico, Spain, Brazil, Canada, countries and world cities — plus the zones themselves and the UTC offsets.
2. Read the standard and the daylight offset. The first one rules the cold half of the year, the second the warm half; in the southern hemisphere they swap places on the calendar, not in meaning.
3. Check whether daylight time is in force right now. That is a line of its own in the facts card: it answers yes or no for today, with this year's transition dates next to it.

The Nine Time Zones of the United States

Six zones cover the states and three more the territories: Atlantic (Puerto Rico), Samoa (American Samoa) and Chamorro (Guam). The Hawaii–Aleutian zone does not change its clocks everywhere: Hawaii never does, while the Aleutian Islands west of 169°30′ W do, and there the summer offset is UTC−9.

Where the Clocks Change and Where They Do Not

• United States and Canada — from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November.
• European Union and the United Kingdom — from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October, switching at 01:00 UTC in every country at once.
• Mexico — abolished in 2022, except the border municipalities (Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez), which follow the clock of the United States.
• Brazil — abolished in 2019.
• Russia — abolished in 2014; all eleven zones keep one time all year.
• Never adopted it at all — India, Japan, China, South Africa, and in the United States Arizona (except the Navajo Nation), Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam and American Samoa.

What It Is Good For

• Calling a colleague or family — checking whether your midday lands in the middle of their night.
• A broadcast or a stream — turning «7 pm ET» into your own time, remembering that ET is UTC−4 in summer, not UTC−5.
• A deadline in UTC — tasks, contests and exchange filings are almost always set in UTC, and the zone's offset moves it onto your clock.
• A flight — working out how far the hands move on landing and whether the date still matches.
• A trading session — the New York exchange runs on Eastern Time, the Moscow one on Moscow Time.
• An online meeting — finding the window that falls inside everyone's working hours.

Regions and Countries With Several Zones

A zone follows longitude, so the dividing line can run straight through a territory — and such a place carries a table of its parts on its page:

• Alaska — UTC−10 – UTC−9
• Amazonas — UTC−5 – UTC−4
• Australia — UTC+8 – UTC+10
• Brazil — UTC−5 – UTC−2
• British Columbia — UTC−8 – UTC−7
• Canada — UTC−8 – UTC−3:30
• Chihuahua — UTC−7 – UTC−6
• Florida — UTC−6 – UTC−5
• Idaho — UTC−8 – UTC−7
• Indiana — UTC−6 – UTC−5
• Indonesia — UTC+7 – UTC+9
• Kansas — UTC−7 – UTC−6
• Kentucky — UTC−6 – UTC−5
• Mexico — UTC−8 – UTC−5
• Michigan — UTC−6 – UTC−5
• Nebraska — UTC−7 – UTC−6
• Newfoundland and Labrador — UTC−4 – UTC−3:30
• North Dakota — UTC−7 – UTC−6
• Ontario — UTC−6 – UTC−5
• Oregon — UTC−8 – UTC−7
• Portugal — UTC−1 – UTC
• Russia — UTC+2 – UTC+12
• Saskatchewan — UTC−7 – UTC−6
• South Dakota — UTC−7 – UTC−6

How to Read the Abbreviations

An abbreviation names a state of the zone, not the zone: PST is Pacific standard, PDT Pacific daylight, and PT the zone itself. The same pair exists for Eastern (EST/EDT), Central (CST/CDT) and Mountain (MST/MDT).

The same abbreviation is often taken by more than one zone: IST is India Standard Time (UTC+5:30), Irish Standard Time (UTC+1) and Israel Standard Time (UTC+2); CST is both US Central (UTC−6) and China Standard Time (UTC+8). In writing the offset is safer: «UTC+5:30» reads the same everywhere.

Some zones have no letter abbreviation at all — the Russian ones apart from Moscow, the Brazilian ones, most of the Asian ones. There the zone is named by its offset: «UTC+7» or «MSK+4».