World clock & time zones

See current times in major cities and convert time zones.

Time zone converter

Base time (your time) Target city

Select a time and a city.

Scheduling across time zones is where meetings quietly go wrong. You work out that your 4pm is their 9am, book it, and then a daylight saving switch three weeks later moves one side by an hour without moving the other.

This page does two things: it shows the current time in ten major cities at a glance, and it converts a date and time you choose into any of those cities' local time. Offsets are read from time zone data rather than a fixed table, so the awkward parts are handled for you.

How it works

Two tools on one page

The world clock sits at the top — a grid of cities updating every second with the local time and date. It answers the quick question of whether the other side is mid-afternoon, asleep, or already into tomorrow.

The converter sits below it. Pick a Base time (your time) from the date-and-time picker, choose a Target city, and the result reads back as that city's full local date and time. Future dates work exactly the same way, which is the point — most scheduling questions are about next week, not right now.

Cities and their standard offsets

City	Standard offset	Observes DST
Seoul	UTC+9	No
Tokyo	UTC+9	No
Beijing	UTC+8	No
Singapore	UTC+8	No
Dubai	UTC+4	No
London	UTC+0	Yes
Paris	UTC+1	Yes
New York	UTC-5	Yes
Los Angeles	UTC-8	Yes
Sydney	UTC+10	Yes

Why offsets are not fixed numbers

Each city is stored as an IANA time zone identifier — America/New_York, not "New York" — and that database carries the full history and schedule of local time rules. The tool therefore decides whether daylight saving applies to the specific date you entered, including dates months ahead.

Three details this quietly takes care of:

The US and Europe do not switch together. In 2026 the US moves to DST on 8 March while the EU waits until 29 March, and the EU returns to standard time on 25 October while the US waits until 1 November. In those two gaps the London-New York difference is one hour off its usual value.
Sydney runs opposite. Southern-hemisphere DST covers roughly October to April, so Australia is springing forward as Europe falls back.
Several cities never switch at all. Korea and Japan do not observe DST, and China runs the entire country on a single UTC+8 offset.

Worth knowing

The world clock is calculated from your own device's clock, so if that is wrong every city on the grid is wrong by the same amount. And because governments do change DST rules — the EU has voted to abolish the switch without yet doing so — it is still worth confirming anything critical directly with the other party.

Terms explained

UTC: Coordinated Universal Time, the reference every other zone is expressed against. An offset like UTC+9 means nine hours ahead of it.
Standard time: A region's baseline local time with no seasonal adjustment applied. The offsets in the table above are all standard time.
DST (daylight saving time): Moving clocks forward an hour for part of the year to shift daylight later into the evening. Start and end dates vary by country.
IANA time zone ID: An identifier such as Asia/Seoul or America/New_York that names a region rather than an offset, and carries its full history of rule changes.
Base time (your time): The starting point for a conversion. It is interpreted in your own device's local time zone.
Target city: The city whose local time you want the base time expressed in.

Frequently asked questions

Is London to New York five hours or four?

Usually five, but for about two weeks each spring and one week each autumn it is four, because the US and EU change their clocks on different dates. Enter the actual meeting date and the tool resolves it for you.

Does it handle daylight saving automatically?

Yes. Each city is tied to a time zone database entry, so the tool checks whether DST applies on the date you entered rather than assuming a fixed offset. Future dates are evaluated against the rules scheduled for that date.

Can I convert a date months in the future?

Yes, and that is the safest way to use it. Pick the real meeting date in the base time picker rather than converting today's time and adding the difference by hand, since a DST switch in between would make that wrong.

The clock shows a time that looks wrong.

The world clock reads from your device's own clock, so a device that is off by a few minutes shifts every city by the same amount. Check your system time settings first.

Why is China one time zone when it is so wide?

China runs the whole country on UTC+8 by policy rather than splitting into geographic zones. Beijing in the table stands in for the whole country, and no DST is applied.