The World's Time Zones

Earth is divided into roughly forty time zones — not the neat twenty-four you were taught in school. The Time Mag groups every city in our index by its current UTC offset, so you can see at a glance which places share a clock.

Why there are forty zones, not twenty-four

The simple model — the planet split into twenty-four equal one-hour slices — almost never matches reality. India and Sri Lanka observe UTC+5:30, half an hour off their neighbours. Nepal goes further with UTC+5:45. Iran, Afghanistan, Myanmar, the Marquesas, parts of Australia all sit on half-hour or quarter-hour offsets. Add daylight saving time, which only some countries observe, and the actual count of distinct civil offsets active at any moment hovers around forty.

That's why time zones are identified by name in the IANA database — Europe/London, Asia/Kolkata — rather than by offset. The name encodes the political authority that sets the rules; the offset can change.

Cities, by current UTC offset

This list reflects right now. Some of these cities will shift offset when daylight saving begins or ends; others stay fixed year-round.

The IANA Time Zone Database

Every time on this site is computed from the IANA Time Zone Database — the canonical record maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority and used by Linux, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, and most web infrastructure. When a country changes its DST rules, the database is updated; when your operating system updates, it pulls those changes too. We let your browser do the heavy lifting, which means our times stay current without us having to ship a release.

The World's Time Zones

Why there are forty zones, not twenty-four

Cities, by current UTC offset

UTC−10 2 cities

UTC−8 1 cities

UTC−7 10 cities

UTC−6 15 cities

UTC−5 22 cities

UTC−4 35 cities

UTC−3 17 cities

UTC+0 12 cities

UTC+1 30 cities

UTC+2 82 cities

UTC+3 58 cities

UTC+3:30 5 cities

UTC+4 8 cities

UTC+4:30 1 cities

UTC+5 16 cities

UTC+5:30 22 cities

UTC+5:45 1 cities

UTC+6 5 cities

UTC+6:30 3 cities

UTC+7 13 cities

UTC+8 32 cities

UTC+9 18 cities

UTC+9:30 2 cities

UTC+10 7 cities

UTC+11 4 cities

UTC+12 8 cities

UTC+13 2 cities

The IANA Time Zone Database