Current Time in Major Cities Worldwide

Global City Time is a free world clock covering thousands of cities. This page explains how the clocks are worked out, where the data behind them comes from, and which of our guides are worth reading first.

How Global City Time works

Live clocks that follow local rules

Every clock on the site is calculated from the IANA time zone database, the same reference that operating systems use. That matters because a time zone is not simply a fixed number of hours away from London: it is a set of rules that shift with politics and season. When a country moves its clocks, adopts a new offset or abandons daylight saving altogether, the rule changes in the database and the clocks here follow it. You never need to work out whether a city is currently on standard or summer time, because the clock has already accounted for it.

Time differences and working overlap

Knowing that two cities are seven hours apart is rarely the question people actually have. What they want to know is when both offices are open at the same moment. Every city page therefore lists the offset against major hubs and, more usefully, the window in which normal working hours overlap. Where there is no overlap at all, it says so plainly rather than leaving you to discover it during the call you have just booked.

Weather, sunrise and sunset

Local time is easier to picture alongside daylight. Each city page shows current conditions, a short forecast, and the sunrise and sunset times for that location, so a nine o'clock call reads very differently depending on whether it lands in darkness or in full daylight.

Start with these guides

We publish a growing library of guides on time, time zones and the practical problems they create. Six good places to begin:

• What Is UTC and Why Is It Important? — every offset on this site is expressed relative to UTC. This explains what the standard actually is, and why it took over from GMT as the world's reference.
• What Is Daylight Saving Time? — why a large part of the world moves its clocks twice a year, where the practice came from, and why it is still argued about.
• How to Schedule Meetings Across Time Zones — a practical routine for booking a call that does not land at midnight for somebody, and the mistakes behind most of the ones that do.
• How to Beat Jet Lag — what genuinely helps when your body clock and local time disagree, and how long the adjustment realistically takes.
• Which Country Has the Most Time Zones? — the answer is not the largest country, and the reason why says a good deal about how time zones are really drawn.
• Solstices and Equinoxes Explained — why the length of the day swings through the year, and why the earliest sunset does not fall on the shortest day.

Where our data comes from

Time zone rules come from the IANA time zone database, which is revised several times a year as governments change their minds; we follow those releases so the offsets stay current. Current conditions, the forecast and the sunrise and sunset times come from WeatherAPI.com and refresh through the day. Geographic details — country, region, coordinates, currency, language and dialling code — come from public geographic datasets.

One limitation is worth stating plainly. Each live clock runs in your browser: it starts from your own device's clock and applies the target city's offset to it. If your device time is wrong, every clock on this site will be wrong by exactly the same amount, so it is worth leaving your device set to update its time automatically. If you spot a detail that looks out of date, please tell us and we will correct it.

Explore the rest of the site

The guides section collects everything we have written about time zones, daylight saving, travel and astronomy. The FAQ answers the questions we are asked most often, and about us explains who runs the site and how it is funded. To browse the catalogue city by city, start from the site map.