World Clock
See the current time in cities around the world side by side and live, with each city's offset and whether daylight saving is currently in effect.
There are not 24 time zones
The mental model is 24 zones, one per hour, wrapped tidily round the globe. Counting the offsets actually in use across the 418 named zones in the standard database, there are 37 distinct ones. Not 24, and not all whole hours — 11 of them sit off the hour entirely:
| Offset | Used by |
|---|---|
| UTC-09:30 | Marquesas |
| UTC-02:30 | St Johns |
| UTC+03:30 | Tehran |
| UTC+04:30 | Kabul |
| UTC+05:30 | Calcutta, Colombo |
| UTC+05:45 | Katmandu |
| UTC+06:30 | Rangoon, Cocos |
| UTC+08:45 | Eucla |
| UTC+09:30 | Adelaide, Broken Hill, Darwin |
| UTC+10:30 | Lord Howe |
| UTC+12:45 | Chatham |
The 45-minute offsets are the real oddities — Nepal, the Chatham Islands, and a corner of Western Australia — and they exist because an offset is a political decision, not a geographical fact.
Which is why three dates are in progress at once
The offsets run from UTC-11:00 to UTC+14:00. That is a span of 25 hours — one hour more than a day.
If the span were 24 hours or less, at most two calendar dates could ever be live at the same moment. At 25 hours a third gets squeezed in, for exactly the 1 hour of overhang. Sampling every quarter of an hour through a full day, three dates were in progress in 4% of samples — which is one hour in 24, to the precision of the sample.
There is also never a moment when the whole world shares one date. At every instant of every day, at least two are running.
The span exceeds a day for political reasons rather than physical ones. Kiribati moved the date line in 1995 so its territory would stop being split across two dates, which created UTC+14:00; Samoa jumped the line the other way in 2011 to share a working week with Australia rather than America. Nothing about the Earth requires the offsets to fit inside a day, and they do not.
How to use
- Add the cities you care about.
- Read the current times side by side.
- Note which cities are on a different date.
- Check the offset if you are scheduling something.
Frequently asked questions
Why use city names rather than offsets?
Because a city carries its daylight saving rules with it while an offset does not. New York is sometimes 4 hours behind UTC and sometimes 5, so pinning a schedule to an offset guarantees it will be wrong for part of the year.
How many time zones are there?
More than 24, because several use half-hour and quarter-hour offsets and the range runs from UTC minus 12 to UTC plus 14. Kiribati moved part of its territory across the date line in 1995 specifically to reach UTC plus 14, so the country could share one calendar day.
Which countries do not use daylight saving?
Most of them, in fact. It is largely a feature of North America, Europe and a scattering of others. Much of Asia, Africa and South America does not observe it, and several countries have abandoned it in recent years after finding the disruption outweighed the benefit.
Does China really have one time zone?
Yes, despite spanning about five zones' worth of longitude. Everywhere in the country officially runs on Beijing time, which means the sun rises very late by the clock in the far west. Xinjiang informally runs on an unofficial local time two hours behind.
Why is the date different in some cities?
Because the international date line falls in the Pacific, so places either side of it are a calendar day apart despite being geographically close. The line itself is not straight — it detours around territories that preferred to share a date with their neighbours.
Is the clock here accurate?
It follows your device's clock, which is normally synchronised to a time server and accurate to well under a second. If your device clock is wrong, every time shown will be equally wrong, since the offsets are applied to it.
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