Did Samoa lose a whole day of the week?

Yes. Friday 30 December 2011 was skipped entirely. People in Samoa went to bed on Thursday 29 December and woke up on Saturday 31 December. They did not lose a day of their lives. The calendar date simply jumped forward.

Is Samoa still UTC+13?

Yes. As of October 2026, Samoa remains on UTC+13 with no daylight saving time. The change made in 2011 is permanent.

Why did American Samoa not change too?

American Samoa is a territory of the United States. The US government did not move the date line for its territory. American Samoa remains on UTC-11 and is one full calendar day behind independent Samoa.

How do I convert Samoa time to my time zone?

Samoa is UTC+13. Add 13 hours to UTC to get local time in Apia. Subtract 13 hours from Apia time to get UTC. For example, 10:00am in Apia is 21:00 UTC the previous day.

Does Samoa observe daylight saving time?

No. Samoa observed DST briefly in 2009 and 2010 but has not done so since the 2011 date line shift.

What is the time difference between Samoa and American Samoa?

Samoa is 24 hours ahead of American Samoa. When it is 10:00am Monday in Apia, it is 10:00am Sunday in Pago Pago.

Samoa date line shift

On 30 December 2011, Samoa skipped Friday entirely and jumped straight to Saturday 31 December. The country moved from the American side of the International Date Line to the Asian side, shifting its time zone from UTC-11 to UTC+13.

Why did Samoa skip 30 December 2011?

At 9:00am on Thursday 29 December in Apia, it was 4:00pm Wednesday 28 December in New York. Twenty-four hours later, at 9:00am Friday the 30th in New York, it was already 7:00am Saturday the 31st in Apia. The date in Samoa jumped forward by two days in the space of one New York business day.

The reason: Samoa moved the International Date Line.

Residents went to bed on Thursday night and woke on Saturday. Friday 30 December 2011 did not exist in Samoa. Payroll systems skipped the day. Hotels adjusted booking calendars overnight. Anyone with a birthday on 30 December that year had no birthday.

Where the date line sat, and where Samoa put it

Before the shift, Samoa sat just east of the International Date Line. The line roughly follows the 180th meridian through the Pacific Ocean, but it zigzags to keep island groups on the same calendar day. Samoa was on the eastern side, same side as the United States, meaning its clocks were behind most of Asia and Australia.

When it was noon Monday in Sydney (UTC+11), it was 2:00pm Sunday in Apia (UTC-11). That caused a practical problem: Samoa did most of its trade with Australia and New Zealand. Businesses in Apia lost two working days every week because Monday morning in Sydney was Sunday in Samoa. You could not call a supplier in Wellington until Tuesday your time. By then the week was half over.

The government fixed that. On 29 December 2011, at midnight local time, Samoa moved the date line to its west side. The country jumped from UTC-11 to UTC+13. Clocks went forward by 24 hours. The calendar date advanced by one full day.

Samoa’s offset before and after the shift

Samoa’s standard time before the shift was UTC-11. After the shift, it became UTC+13. The offset changed by 24 hours, not 12.

Daylight saving time was not involved. Samoa observed DST briefly in the 1970s and again in 2009 and 2010, but the 2011 date line shift was a permanent change to standard time. The country has not observed DST since.

The IANA time zone database records the change as a zone split. Before 2011, Samoa used the zone Pacific/Apia with offset UTC-11. After the shift, the same zone name applies but the offset is now UTC+13. The database stores the history so that any date before 30 December 2011 is correctly shown as UTC-11, and any date after as UTC+13.

What happened to flights and phone calls?

A flight from Apia to Pago Pago in American Samoa, only 160 kilometres away, crosses the date line. American Samoa stayed on UTC-11 and did not change. A two-hour flight can arrive the day before you left. That still happens.

Phone calls between Samoa and its trading partners became easier. When it is 9:00am Monday in Apia, it is 6:00am Monday in Sydney (UTC+11) during Australian winter, or 7:00am Monday during Australian summer. Before the shift, 9:00am Monday in Apia was 8:00am Monday in Sydney, but the working week in Samoa started a day later because of the date line. The shift removed that lag.

Why not just change the clock by 24 hours?

Moving the date line is the same as changing the clock by 24 hours, but it affects the calendar date. If Samoa had shifted from UTC-11 to UTC+13 without moving the date line, the country would have been on the wrong calendar day for its longitude. The date line exists precisely to prevent that.

The International Date Line is not a fixed line. It is a convention that each country decides for itself. Kiribati moved the date line in 1995 so that the entire country shared the same calendar day. Before that, the Phoenix Islands and Line Islands were on opposite sides of the line. Samoa followed the same logic in 2011.

What Samoa time means for anyone scheduling a call

If you see a time in Samoa today, add 13 hours to UTC to get local time. Samoa is one of the first places in the world to see a new day, alongside Kiribati and Tonga. When it is midnight UTC, it is 1:00pm in Apia.

American Samoa, the unincorporated US territory about 160 kilometres east, is still on UTC-11. The two Samoas are 24 hours apart, even though they share the same islands, language and much of the same culture. A phone call between them crosses the date line.

For anyone scheduling a meeting between Samoa and a city on the US west coast, the difference is large. When it is 9:00am Monday in Apia, it is 1:00pm Sunday in Los Angeles (UTC-8 during standard time). You are calling a day behind.

Will Samoa shift the date line again?

As of October 2026, no further date line shift is planned for Samoa. But the IANA time zone database continues to record changes worldwide. The next notable Pacific shift may come from Tonga, which has discussed moving to the same side of the date line as New Zealand, or from French overseas collectivities that have adjusted offsets in recent years.

The International Date Line is not permanent. Any country can move it by decree. If you do business with a Pacific island nation, check the current offset before assuming it matches the map in your head. The IANA database, which powers every major operating system and programming language, records these changes as they happen. Your laptop already knows about Samoa’s missing Friday. It just never told you.