BST Time Now

What this page shows

So you want to know what the time is in the UK right now. Maybe you have a call with someone in London, a flight to catch, a match kicking off on UK 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 the United Kingdom 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 UK time and keeps itself right on its own, even across the days when the clocks change. Whether the UK is on BST or GMT at the time, the clock shows the correct UK time.

BST is the summer half of UK time

Here is the thing worth getting straight up front. BST is not a year-round zone. It is the summer half of UK time. The United Kingdom runs on BST, British Summer Time, through the warmer months, and on GMT, Greenwich Mean Time, through the colder ones.

So there are two settings behind UK time, and BST is one of them:

• BST, British Summer Time. One hour ahead of UTC, written UTC plus 1. The summer setting, and the one this page is named for.
• GMT, Greenwich Mean Time. Level with UTC, at zero offset, one hour behind BST. The winter setting.

What that means in practice is that for the winter months, roughly late October to late March, the UK is not on BST at all. It is on GMT. The clock above still shows the right UK time through those months, it is simply GMT that it is showing then. For the winter, standard side on its own page, here is GMT Time Now.

What BST actually is, and the Bangladesh mix-up

BST stands for British Summer Time. It is the daylight saving version of UK time, one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, which puts it at one hour ahead of UTC. When the UK springs forward in spring, GMT at zero offset becomes BST at UTC plus 1, and the evenings pick up an extra hour of daylight. In autumn it falls back to GMT.

Now, one heads up. BST is also the abbreviation for Bangladesh Standard Time, which is six hours ahead of UTC, written UTC plus 6, and does not use daylight saving. That is a completely different clock on the other side of the world. This page is about British Summer Time. If Bangladesh is what you were after, you want a clock set to UTC plus 6.

One more bit of naming to be aware of. Ireland runs on the same clock as the UK in summer but calls its version Irish Standard Time, and across the rest of Europe the same hour is known as Western European Summer Time. Different names, same UTC plus 1.

When the UK is on BST and when it is on GMT

Whether the UK is on BST or GMT comes down to the date, and those dates are set in UK law, the Summer Time Act 1972 as amended by the Summer Time Order 2002. The change lands on two Sundays, the same ones the rest of the UK's European neighbours use:

• Spring forward. On the last Sunday of March, at 1 in the morning GMT, the clocks jump ahead one hour. GMT becomes BST, and the UK goes from zero offset to UTC plus 1. This is when BST begins.
• Fall back. On the last Sunday of October, at 2 in the morning BST, the clocks drop back one hour. BST ends and GMT returns, level with UTC.

So the rule is short. BST is in effect from the last Sunday of March to the last Sunday of October. Outside that window, from late October round to late March, the UK is on GMT instead. Find where today sits between those two Sundays and you will know which one is running.

Converting BST to other time zones

BST sits one hour ahead of UTC, so converting from it is a matter of working from that. The gaps to other places that also run daylight saving stay steady through the summer, because everyone has shifted together. Here is the quick reference, assuming it is 12 noon BST in the summer.

A few quick examples

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

Say it is 12 noon in London during the summer, when the UK is on BST. Central Europe is one hour ahead, so it is 1 in the afternoon in Berlin. UTC sits one hour behind, at 11 in the morning. India is four and a half hours ahead, so 4:30 in the afternoon in Mumbai.

Now a call to New York. New York is normally five hours behind the UK, so 12 noon in London is 7 in the morning there, early but reachable. That five hour gap holds for most of the year, but there is a catch. The US and the UK do not change their clocks on the same dates, so for two or three weeks in spring and about a week in autumn the gap briefly drops to four hours.

One more, on the offset. At 12 noon on BST it is 11 in the morning UTC, because BST is one hour ahead. That same noon in the winter, when the UK is back on GMT, would be 12 noon UTC, since GMT is level with it. The clock reading is the same, the offset to UTC moves by an hour, and daylight saving is the only reason.

Where British Summer Time is used

BST is used across the whole United Kingdom through the months daylight saving is active, taking in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast, and everywhere between. The dates are set by UK law and apply the same way across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

The Republic of Ireland keeps the same clock through the summer, though it calls its version Irish Standard Time. Portugal and the Canary Islands run the same hour too, where it goes by Western European Summer Time. All of them sit at UTC plus 1 for the summer and fall back to zero offset for the winter, on the same two Sundays.

Cities on UK time

If you want the live clock for a particular UK city rather than the country as a whole, here are a couple to jump to:

• London time now
• Edinburgh time now

For the winter, standard-time side of UK time, see GMT Time Now, and for the global reference at zero offset, see UTC Time Now.

Questions people ask

What time is it in BST right now?

The clock near the top of this page is the answer, and it updates every second. Keep in mind that BST is the summer setting of UK time. Through the winter the UK is on GMT instead, and the clock shows that. Either way, the time shown is the correct UK time.

Is the UK on BST or GMT right now?

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

What is the difference between BST and GMT?

GMT is the standard setting at zero offset, level with UTC. BST is the daylight saving setting at one hour ahead, UTC plus 1. The UK springs forward to BST in March and falls back to GMT in October. UK time means whichever one is active.

How many hours ahead of UTC is BST?

One hour ahead, written UTC plus 1. That is the summer offset. In winter the UK is on GMT, which is level with UTC at zero offset.

Does BST mean British Summer Time or Bangladesh Standard Time?

It is used for both. BST is British Summer Time at one hour ahead of UTC, and it is also Bangladesh Standard Time at six hours ahead of UTC. They are different clocks on opposite sides of the world. This page shows British Summer Time.

What is the IANA name for UK time?

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

References

1. UK Summer Time Order 2002 (SI 2002/262), amending the Summer Time Act 1972, which sets the dates the United Kingdom switches between GMT and British Summer Time. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2002/262/contents/made
2. Directive 2000/84/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on summer-time arrangements, which aligns the UK and European change dates to the last Sundays of March and October. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2000/84/oj
3. National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the United Kingdom's national measurement institute and keeper of UK time. https://www.npl.co.uk
4. Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). Time Zone Database (the tz database), home of the Europe/London identifier. https://www.iana.org/time-zones