Edinburgh Time Now

What this page shows

So you want to know what time it is in Edinburgh right now. Maybe you have a call with someone in Scotland, 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 Edinburgh 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 Edinburgh and keeps itself right on its own, even across the days when the clocks change. Whether Edinburgh is on its winter or its summer setting at the time, the clock shows the correct local time.

Edinburgh changes its clocks twice a year

Here is the part worth knowing about Edinburgh time. Edinburgh does not stay on the same clock all year. It uses Greenwich Mean Time, GMT, through the winter, and moves an hour ahead to British Summer Time, BST, for the summer, exactly like the rest of the United Kingdom.

So there are two settings behind Edinburgh time:

• GMT, Greenwich Mean Time. Level with UTC, at zero offset. The winter setting, from late October to late March.
• BST, British Summer Time. One hour ahead of UTC, written UTC plus 1. 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 Edinburgh is in

Edinburgh runs on UK time, Greenwich Mean Time in winter and British Summer Time in summer. It keeps exactly the same clock as London, Cardiff, and Belfast, since the whole United Kingdom is a single time zone, level with UTC in the colder months and one hour ahead in the warmer ones.

What sets Edinburgh apart is not the clock but how far north it sits. The Scottish capital is a good few degrees nearer the pole than London, and that makes for noticeably longer summer days and shorter winter ones than further south. The clock is identical across Britain, but the sky over Edinburgh keeps a more extreme schedule, as the facts below explain.

How to tell if Edinburgh is on GMT or BST right now

Edinburgh changes its clocks on two Sundays a year, and the dates are set in UK law, the Summer Time Act 1972 as amended by the Summer Time Order 2002. They are the same dates the rest of Europe uses:

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

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

Time difference from Edinburgh to other cities

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

A few quick examples

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

Say it is 12 noon in Edinburgh. Paris is an hour ahead all year, so 1 in the afternoon there. In the winter, New York is five hours behind, making it 7 in the morning on the US East Coast, while Mumbai is five and a half hours ahead at 5:30 in the evening.

Now a call to New York, which has one small catch. The UK 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 five hour gap briefly narrows to four. For anything that has to land exactly in those weeks, trust the live clock over the rule of thumb.

And since Edinburgh keeps the same time as London, any plan made on London time works here without a single change, which is handy when you are coordinating across the UK.

A couple of things about Edinburgh time

Edinburgh sits a long way north, at about 56 degrees of latitude, several degrees nearer the pole than London, so the length of the day swings hard across the year. Around midsummer there are roughly seventeen and a half hours between sunrise and sunset, with the sky barely going fully dark at night, while around midwinter that drops to about seven hours and it is dark by mid-afternoon. Go further north still, into the Scottish islands, and midsummer brings the simmer dim, a long twilight where the sun barely dips below the horizon.

On the clock-against-sun question, Edinburgh is a fair match. It sits a little west of the Greenwich meridian, so the sun reaches its highest a few minutes after 12 noon by the clock in winter, and an hour or so later in summer on BST. The long, light summer evenings come mostly from the high latitude rather than the clock running ahead.

Other places on the same time

If you want the live clock for another place that keeps the same time as Edinburgh, London runs on UK time too:

• London time now

For the country as a whole, see United Kingdom time now. And if it is the time zone itself you are reading up on rather than the city, the winter side is at GMT Time Now, the summer side at BST Time Now, and the global reference both are measured from at UTC Time Now.

Questions people ask

What time is it in Edinburgh right now?

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

Is Edinburgh on GMT or BST right now?

Go by the dates. Edinburgh is on BST 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 GMT. Find where today falls between those two Sundays and you will know.

Is Edinburgh the same time as London?

Yes, exactly. The whole United Kingdom keeps one time zone, so Edinburgh and London always read the same clock, down to the second, summer and winter alike.

What time zone is Edinburgh in?

Greenwich Mean Time, at zero offset, in the winter, and British Summer Time, one hour ahead of UTC, in the summer. It keeps the same clock as the rest of the United Kingdom.

How many hours ahead of New York is Edinburgh?

Normally five hours ahead. The two change their clocks but on slightly different dates, so for a couple of short windows in spring and autumn the gap narrows to four hours.

What is the IANA name for Edinburgh time?

It is Europe/London in the IANA time zone database, the time data your phone and your computer use. The whole UK runs on a single identifier, 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/London identifier used across the United Kingdom. https://www.iana.org/time-zones
2. 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
3. National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the United Kingdom's national measurement institute and keeper of UK time. https://www.npl.co.uk
4. 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