World Clock

TheDate.today provides accurate world time, statistics and weather in major cities across the world.

With incomparable time-telling precision, World Clock is the perfect point of reference for travelers and business people alike. Whether you’re looking to book a flight, schedule an international teleconference, use our time zone converter or our time zone map and observe the trading hours of an overseas business, TheDate.today can show you the time in a matter of seconds.

There are two standards by which a country’s time zone is categorized; the older of the two standards is Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and the more modern of the two standards is Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). However, there is no actual time difference between GMT and UTC and therefore the two can be used interchangeably.

To calculate the time zone an area theoretically falls in, the measurement of the area’s longitudinal coordinate is divided by 15. GMT was the same as Universal Time up until 1972. It is now a simple time zone. In 1847, the British railroads accepted GMT as a standard. It was calibrated using telescopes. The Meridian, after which GMT is named, is used to represent 0 degrees longitude (although it is not truly 0 degrees). Every place on Earth is measured either in degrees east or degrees west of this line.

The fact that time zones around the world are all calculated as an offset or difference from standard time makes it easy to know the time of a place by just knowing the time zone it falls in and the standard time at the current moment. Calculations can also be done using local time once the expected time difference is known. Most time zones are exactly one hour apart and their time is calculated as an offset from Coordinated Universal Time you can see this in our time zone map or by using our time zone converter to check the time difference between one location and another. Heading west of the Prime Meridian / Greenwich Meridian, time is earlier while heading in an easterly direction time is later. The International Date Line adds 3 to the total of time zones around the world. Additionally, several time zones are 30 and 45 minutes apart. Therefore, there are more than the theoretic 24 time zones around the world.

Time zones are regions of the earth divided by lines of longitude. There are 24 different time zones on earth to correlate with the 24 hours in each day and which are displayed in our time zone map here at World Clock. The UK sets the standard for Greenwich Mean Time at “GMT 0” and other countries can calculate their time zone in accordance with how many hours they are ahead of or behind the UK. For instance, Saudi Arabia, which is 3 hours ahead of the UK, has a time zone of “GMT +3” and Colombia, which is 5 hours behind the UK, has a time zone of “GMT -5”.

What Is Daylight Saving Time (DST)?

Daylight Savings Time (DST) is practiced in certain parts of the world in order to allow for more hours of daylight during the working day. Therefore, for half of the year some countries adjust their clocks by one hour. World Clocks are adjusted forward by one hour in the early spring and then set back by one hour in the autumn. This means that, in the spring, a clock will go from 4:00 Standard Time to 5:00 DST.