Time zone map

Each dot is a patch of land about 1.5 degrees across, shaded by the time zone it belongs to.^[1] Zones on different offsets get different shades, so a change of shade is a change of clock time. Your own zone is drawn in amber.

• Point or tap to see a zone's name, local time, abbreviation and next clock change. Every other zone on the same offset stays bold.
• Pick an offset under the map to light up every zone that uses it right now.
• Change the time shown to see daylight saving time move: try a date in July, then one in January.

The map shows 297 time zones over 7,812 dots. At this scale, very small countries and islands can be hidden by a neighbour; use "Find a place" to check one.

In theory, time zones would be neat 15-degree stripes. In practice, each country decides its own time, and zone borders follow national and regional borders.^[2] A few things stand out on the map:

• China officially uses one time zone, UTC+8, across land wide enough for five.^[3] The far west shows as UTC+6 because the time zone database also records Xinjiang time, which many people there use alongside Beijing time.^[4]
• Spain is level with Britain but shares Central European Time with Germany, a choice made in 1940.^[5]
• India is a single zone on UTC+5:30, so its shade differs from both neighbours on whole hours.

The International Date Line runs down the Pacific, bending around island countries so each stays on one side. The zones just west of it are the first to reach each new day; those just east are the last. Samoa moved from one side to the other in 2011, skipping a day to share a working week with Australia and New Zealand.^[6] Read more in what is a time zone?

Daylight saving time shifts a zone's offset for part of the year, so the map changes with the date. In northern summer, much of Europe and North America moves an hour later and their shading shifts; in southern summer, southeastern Australia and New Zealand do. The DST change tracker lists every change date.

Time zone boundaries are © OpenStreetMap contributors, compiled by the timezone-boundary-builder project and available under the Open Database Licence.^{[1, 7]} TimeZonar looked up the zone at the centre of each dot once, and the offsets and clock changes come live from the time zone database in your browser.^[2]

For every zone in a searchable table, see the list of time zones; for the live time in each, the world clock.

1. 1.timezone-boundary-builder (Evan Siroky), Time zone boundaries built from OpenStreetMap. Where each time zone's borders run. Data © OpenStreetMap contributors, under the ODbL.
2. 2.IANA, Time Zone Database. Each zone's offsets and clock changes, which your browser applies to the map.
3. 3.Guinness World Records, Largest country in one time zone. China's single official time zone.
4. 4.IANA tz project, The asia file (Asia/Urumqi notes). Xinjiang time, UTC+6, being widely used alongside Beijing time.
5. 5.NPR, Spain's been in the wrong time zone for seven decades. Spain's move to Central European Time in 1940.
6. 6.The Christian Science Monitor, Samoa skips Friday in leap across international dateline. Samoa moving to the west side of the date line in 2011.
7. 7.OpenStreetMap, Copyright and licence. The terms of the Open Database Licence the boundary data is under.