Which UTC offsets are in use right now?
At 12:00 UTC on a Tuesday, clocks on Baker Island read 00:00 Tuesday. Clocks in the Line Islands read 02:00 Wednesday. That 26-hour spread exists because the International Date Line zigzags around national borders, not meridians. The offset itself is the number added to Coordinated Universal Time to get local clock time. A place on UTC+05:30, at 12:00 UTC, shows 17:30.
An offset is a difference, not a time zone. A time zone is a region that observes the same offset at a given date. The offset can change within that region when daylight saving starts or ends. This reference lists the offsets. For how zones and offsets connect, see the IANA time zone database explained.
Every current UTC offset, listed
The table below shows every UTC offset currently in use, the common abbreviation (if one exists), and the type of region that uses it. Offsets marked "DST only" appear only during daylight saving months.
| UTC offset | Common name(s) | Typical region type |
|---|---|---|
| UTC-12:00 | AoE (Anywhere on Earth) | Uninhabited US territories (Baker, Howland) |
| UTC-11:00 | SST (Samoa Standard Time) | American Samoa, Niue |
| UTC-10:00 | HST (Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time) | Hawaii, Cook Islands, French Polynesia |
| UTC-09:30 | Marquesas Islands (French Polynesia) | |
| UTC-09:00 | AKST (Alaska Standard Time) | Alaska, Gambier Islands |
| UTC-08:00 | PST (Pacific Standard Time) | Western US/Canada, Clipperton Island |
| UTC-07:00 | MST (Mountain Standard Time) | Mountain US/Canada, parts of Mexico |
| UTC-06:00 | CST (Central Standard Time) | Central US/Canada, Central America |
| UTC-05:00 | EST (Eastern Standard Time) | Eastern US/Canada, Colombia, Peru |
| UTC-04:00 | AST (Atlantic Standard Time) | Puerto Rico, Venezuela, parts of Canada |
| UTC-03:30 | NST (Newfoundland Standard Time) | Newfoundland, Labrador |
| UTC-03:00 | BRT (Brasília Standard Time) | Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay |
| UTC-02:00 | FST (Fernando de Noronha) | South Georgia, parts of Brazil |
| UTC-01:00 | CVT (Cape Verde Time) | Cape Verde, Azores (winter) |
| UTC±00:00 | GMT/WET | UK, Ireland, Portugal, West Africa |
| UTC+01:00 | CET (Central European Time) | Most of Europe, Central Africa |
| UTC+02:00 | EET (Eastern European Time) | Eastern Europe, Egypt, South Africa |
| UTC+03:00 | MSK (Moscow Standard Time) | Russia, East Africa, Saudi Arabia |
| UTC+03:30 | IRST (Iran Standard Time) | Iran |
| UTC+04:00 | GST (Gulf Standard Time) | UAE, Oman, Mauritius |
| UTC+04:30 | AFT (Afghanistan Time) | Afghanistan |
| UTC+05:00 | PKT (Pakistan Standard Time) | Pakistan, Maldives, parts of Russia |
| UTC+05:30 | IST (India Standard Time) | India, Sri Lanka |
| UTC+05:45 | NPT (Nepal Time) | Nepal |
| UTC+06:00 | BST (Bangladesh Standard Time) | Bangladesh, Bhutan, parts of Russia |
| UTC+06:30 | MMT (Myanmar Time) | Myanmar, Cocos Islands |
| UTC+07:00 | ICT (Indochina Time) | Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia (west) |
| UTC+08:00 | CST (China Standard Time) | China, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan |
| UTC+08:45 | Eucla (Western Australia) | |
| UTC+09:00 | JST (Japan Standard Time) | Japan, South Korea, Indonesia (east) |
| UTC+09:30 | ACST (Australian Central Standard Time) | South Australia, Northern Territory |
| UTC+10:00 | AEST (Australian Eastern Standard Time) | Eastern Australia, Guam, Papua New Guinea |
| UTC+10:30 | LHST (Lord Howe Standard Time) | Lord Howe Island |
| UTC+11:00 | SBT (Solomon Islands Time) | Solomon Islands, New Caledonia |
| UTC+12:00 | NZST (New Zealand Standard Time) | New Zealand, Fiji |
| UTC+12:45 | CHAST (Chatham Standard Time) | Chatham Islands |
| UTC+13:00 | PHST (Phoenix Island Time) | Samoa, Tokelau, Tonga |
| UTC+14:00 | LINT (Line Islands Time) | Kiribati (Line Islands) |
Base offsets vs daylight offsets
Daylight saving time adds one hour to the base offset for part of the year. The same location can appear under two different UTC offsets in a single year.
New York City uses UTC-05:00 in winter (EST) and UTC-04:00 in summer (EDT). London uses UTC±00:00 in winter (GMT) and UTC+01:00 in summer (BST). When a region switches to DST, its offset shifts forward by exactly one hour.
Because of DST, the set of offsets actually observed in a given year is larger than the set of base offsets. A region that stays on UTC-05:00 year round is different from one that uses UTC-05:00 half the year and UTC-04:00 the other half, even though both share the same base offset.
Why do some offsets use :30 or :45?
Most offsets are whole hours, but nine are not. These fractional offsets exist because the region chose a meridian that does not fall on a 15-degree boundary, or chose to keep a historical time.
Half-hour offsets (:30):
- UTC-09:30 (Marquesas Islands)
- UTC-03:30 (Newfoundland)
- UTC+03:30 (Iran)
- UTC+04:30 (Afghanistan)
- UTC+05:30 (India, Sri Lanka)
- UTC+06:30 (Myanmar, Cocos Islands)
- UTC+09:30 (South Australia, Northern Territory)
- UTC+10:30 (Lord Howe Island)
Quarter-hour offsets (:45):
- UTC+05:45 (Nepal)
- UTC+08:45 (Eucla, Western Australia)
- UTC+12:45 (Chatham Islands)
For a deeper look at why these exist, see half-hour and quarter-hour time zones explained.
How offsets relate to IANA zone names
An IANA time zone name like "America/New_York" or "Asia/Kolkata" contains the offset history for that location, including past and future DST changes. The offset alone is a snapshot: it tells you what the clock says right now, but not what it will say next month.
The IANA database preserves historical offsets that no longer exist. "Asia/Kathmandu" records Nepal's shift from UTC+05:40 to UTC+05:45. "Pacific/Chatham" tracks the Chatham Islands' shift from UTC+12:15 to UTC+12:45.
The IANA time zone database explained covers how these names are maintained and what information they store.
What is my UTC offset right now?
The simplest way: look up the IANA zone name for the location, then check the offset. Most operating systems and programming languages can do this. On the command line:
TZ='America/New_York' date +%z
This returns "-0500" or "-0400" depending on the date. The output follows ISO 8601 format: a sign, two digits for hours, two digits for minutes.
Web tools and world clocks show the current offset for any city. The live world clock updates every second.
Offsets that no longer exist
Several offsets have been retired as countries changed their timekeeping:
- UTC+08:30 (North Korea's "Pyongyang Time"): used from 2015 to 2018, then reverted to UTC+09:00.
- UTC-04:30 (Venezuela): used from 2007 to 2016, then returned to UTC-04:00.
- UTC+05:40 (Nepal, historical): replaced by UTC+05:45 in 1956.
- UTC+12:15 (Chatham Islands, historical): replaced by UTC+12:45.
These are preserved in the IANA database as historical entries. The database records every change, so software can correctly handle dates in the past.
How offsets appear in ISO 8601 and other formats
ISO 8601 represents UTC offsets as a sign followed by two digits for hours, a colon, and two digits for minutes. Examples:
2026-10-01T12:00:00+05:30(India)2026-10-01T12:00:00-05:00(Eastern Standard Time)2026-10-01T12:00:00Z(UTC itself; the "Z" stands for "Zulu" time)
The "Z" suffix is equivalent to +00:00. It is the common way to write UTC in logs, APIs, and timestamps.
In email headers and some file formats, offsets appear as a four-digit number without a colon: -0500, +0530. The sign is always present, and the minutes are always two digits (00, 30, or 45).
Why the UTC offsets list spans 26 hours, not 24
The International Date Line is not a straight line. It bends east and west to keep island groups and countries on the same calendar day. As a result, the earliest zone (UTC+14) and the latest zone (UTC-12) are 26 hours apart.
When it is noon on Tuesday in London:
- It is 02:00 on Wednesday in the Line Islands (UTC+14).
- It is 22:00 on Monday on Baker Island (UTC-12).
For two hours every day, three different calendar dates are in use simultaneously. This matters for anyone filing a deadline "by AoE" (Anywhere on Earth, which means UTC-12), or for global software that must handle date rollover correctly.