Amsterdam Time Now

What this page shows

So you want to know what time it is in Amsterdam right now. Maybe you have a call with someone in the Netherlands, a flight to catch, a match kicking off on local time, or someone to reach before their evening is over. That is what the clock at the top of this page is for. It shows the current time in Amsterdam and ticks forward every second, so there is nothing for you to work out by hand.

Wherever in the world you are reading this from, the clock tracks Amsterdam and keeps itself right on its own, even across the days when the clocks change. Whether Amsterdam is on its winter or its summer setting at the time, the clock shows the correct local time.

Amsterdam changes its clocks twice a year

Here is the part worth knowing about Amsterdam time. Amsterdam does not stay on the same clock all year. It uses Central European Time, CET, through the winter, and moves an hour ahead to Central European Summer Time, CEST, for the summer.

So there are two settings behind Amsterdam time:

• CET, Central European Time. One hour ahead of UTC, written UTC plus 1. The winter setting, from late October to late March.
• CEST, Central European Summer Time. Two hours ahead of UTC, written UTC plus 2. The summer setting, from late March to late October.

The clock above follows whichever one is in force, so you do not have to track it yourself. The section further down spells out the dates if you ever need to work it out for a particular day.

What time zone Amsterdam is in

Amsterdam runs on Central European Time, the same zone as Germany, France, and Italy, one hour ahead of UTC in winter and two hours ahead in summer. The whole of the Netherlands keeps this clock.

It has not always, though, and the story is a quirky one. Until the Second World War, the Netherlands kept its own peculiar time, about twenty minutes ahead of UTC, set from a meridian running over Amsterdam itself. It was one of the last odd, not-quite-round offsets left in Europe. Then in 1940, during the German occupation, the country was moved onto Central European Time to match its neighbours, and it simply stayed there once the war was over. So the tidy round hour Amsterdam keeps today is younger than you might think.

How to tell if Amsterdam is on CET or CEST right now

Amsterdam changes its clocks on two Sundays a year, and across the European Union those dates are fixed by law, Directive 2000/84/EC on summer-time arrangements. Every member state changes together:

• Spring forward. On the last Sunday of March, the clocks jump ahead one hour. CET becomes CEST, and Amsterdam goes from UTC plus 1 to UTC plus 2.
• Fall back. On the last Sunday of October, the clocks drop back one hour. CEST becomes CET again, at UTC plus 1.

So the rule is short. From the last Sunday of March to the last Sunday of October, Amsterdam is on CEST. The rest of the year, late October round to late March, it is on CET. Place today between those two Sundays and you have your answer.

Time difference from Amsterdam to other cities

The cities that share Europe's daylight saving schedule stay a fixed distance from Amsterdam all year, while the ones that do not change their clocks can shift by an hour between Amsterdam's winter and summer. Here is the quick reference, assuming it is 12 noon in Amsterdam.

A few quick examples

Let us run a few, so you can see how this works.

Say it is 12 noon in Amsterdam. London is an hour behind all year, so 11 in the morning there. In the winter, New York is six hours behind, making it 6 in the morning on the US East Coast, while Mumbai is four and a half hours ahead at 4:30 in the afternoon.

Now a call to New York, which has one small catch. The Netherlands and the US both change their clocks, but not on the same dates, so for a couple of short windows in spring and autumn the usual six hour gap briefly narrows to five. For anything that has to land exactly in those weeks, trust the live clock over the rule of thumb.

And one for Asia. Tokyo is eight hours ahead of Amsterdam in winter, so a 9 in the morning start in Amsterdam is already 5 in the evening in Tokyo. The overlap between the Netherlands and Japan is narrow, so those calls tend to sit early in the Amsterdam morning.

A couple of things about Amsterdam time

Amsterdam sits well to the north, at about 52 degrees of latitude, so the length of the day swings a good deal across the year. Around midsummer there are nearly seventeen hours between sunrise and sunset, with the light lasting late into the evening, while around midwinter that drops to under eight hours and it is dark by the late afternoon.

On the clock-against-sun question, Amsterdam sits a fair way west of the meridian Central European Time is built on, so the sun reaches its highest a good half hour or more after 12 noon by the clock in winter, and later still in summer on CEST. It is a gentler version of the same lean that makes Spanish evenings run so late, a quiet legacy of the round hour the Netherlands adopted in the 1940s.

Other places on the same time

Plenty of cities keep the same time as Amsterdam on Central European Time. Here are a few to jump to:

• Berlin time now
• Paris time now
• Rome time now
• Zurich time now

And if it is the time zone itself you are reading up on rather than the city, the summer side is at CEST Time Now, and the global reference it is measured from at UTC Time Now.

Questions people ask

What time is it in Amsterdam right now?

The clock near the top of this page is the answer, and it updates every second. Just remember that Amsterdam changes its clocks, so it shows CET through the winter and CEST through the summer, switching over on its own. Either way, the time shown is the correct Amsterdam time.

Is Amsterdam on CET or CEST right now?

Go by the dates. Amsterdam is on CEST from the last Sunday of March to the last Sunday of October. The rest of the year, from late October round to late March, it is on CET. Find where today falls between those two Sundays and you will know.

What time zone is Amsterdam in?

Central European Time, one hour ahead of UTC, in the winter, and Central European Summer Time, two hours ahead, in the summer. The whole of the Netherlands keeps the same clock, as do Germany, France, and Italy.

How many hours ahead of London is Amsterdam?

One hour ahead, all year. Amsterdam and London both change their clocks, but on the same dates, so the one hour gap between them never changes.

What is the time difference between Amsterdam and New York?

New York is normally six hours behind Amsterdam. The two change their clocks on slightly different dates, so for a couple of short windows in spring and autumn the gap narrows to five hours.

What is the IANA name for Amsterdam time?

It is Europe/Amsterdam in the IANA time zone database, the time data your phone and your computer use. It carries both the CET and CEST offsets along with the rule for switching between them, and it is what drives the live clock on this page.

References

1. Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). Time Zone Database (the tz database), home of the Europe/Amsterdam identifier. https://www.iana.org/time-zones
2. Directive 2000/84/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on summer-time arrangements, which sets the last Sundays of March and October as the change dates across the EU. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2000/84/oj
3. Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM), Time Department, which maintains Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the reference Central European Time is measured from. https://www.bipm.org/en/work-programme/time