Las Vegas Time Now

What this page shows

So you want to know what time it is in Las Vegas right now. Maybe you have a call with someone in Nevada, a flight to catch, a show or fight starting on local time, or someone to reach before their evening is over, whenever that may be in a city like this one. That is what the clock at the top of this page is for. It shows the current time in Las Vegas 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 Las Vegas and keeps itself right on its own, even across the days when the clocks change. Whether the city is on its winter or its summer setting at the time, the clock shows the correct local time.

Las Vegas changes its clocks twice a year

Here is the part worth knowing about Las Vegas time. The city does not stay on the same clock all year. It uses Pacific Standard Time, PST, through the winter, and moves an hour ahead to Pacific Daylight Time, PDT, for the summer.

So there are two settings behind Las Vegas time:

• PST, Pacific Standard Time. Eight hours behind UTC, written UTC minus 8. The winter setting, from early November to early March.
• PDT, Pacific Daylight Time. Seven hours behind UTC, written UTC minus 7. The summer setting, from early March to early November.

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 Las Vegas is in

Las Vegas runs on Pacific Time, eight hours behind UTC in winter and seven hours behind in summer. That sometimes surprises people, since the city sits well inland in the Nevada desert, east of California, and might be expected to keep Mountain Time like Arizona next door. But Nevada is almost entirely on Pacific Time, so Las Vegas reads the same clock as Los Angeles and the rest of the West Coast.

There is a fitting twist to time in Las Vegas. It is a round-the-clock city, where the casinos never close and a great deal of life runs through the night, so the clock matters less to its rhythm than almost anywhere else. The hour on the wall is the same Pacific Time as California, but the city pays it less mind.

How to tell if Las Vegas is on PST or PDT right now

Las Vegas changes its clocks on two Sundays a year, and the dates are set in US law, the Uniform Time Act, last amended by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. They are different from the European dates, landing a little wider on each side:

• Spring forward. On the second Sunday of March, at 2 in the morning, the clocks jump ahead one hour. PST becomes PDT, and the city goes from UTC minus 8 to UTC minus 7.
• Fall back. On the first Sunday of November, at 2 in the morning, the clocks drop back one hour. PDT becomes PST again, at UTC minus 8.

So the rule is short. From the second Sunday of March to the first Sunday of November, Las Vegas is on PDT. The rest of the year, early November round to early March, it is on PST. Place today between those two Sundays and you have your answer.

Time difference from Las Vegas to other cities

The cities that share North America's daylight saving schedule stay a fixed distance from Las Vegas all year, while the ones on different schedules can shift by an hour at the edges of the seasons. Here is the quick reference, assuming it is 12 noon in Las Vegas.

A few quick examples

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

Say it is 12 noon in Las Vegas. New York is three hours ahead all year, so 3 in the afternoon on the East Coast. In the winter, London is eight hours ahead, making it 8 in the evening there, while UTC is eight hours ahead at 8 in the evening as well.

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

And one for Asia, which is the real challenge. Tokyo is seventeen hours ahead of Las Vegas in winter, so 12 noon here is 5 in the morning the next day in Tokyo. There is no shared working hour at all, so calls between the West Coast and Japan land in the early morning or late evening for one side.

A couple of things about Las Vegas time

Las Vegas sits at about 36 degrees north, fairly far south, so the length of the day swings only moderately across the year. Around midsummer there are roughly fourteen and a quarter hours between sunrise and sunset, and around midwinter still close to ten, a gentle spread suited to the desert.

On the clock-against-sun question, Las Vegas sits a fair way east of the meridian Pacific Standard Time is built on, so the sun reaches its highest about twenty minutes before 12 noon by the clock in winter. In summer, on PDT, the clock runs ahead of the sun, like the rest of the country. None of which the city pays much attention to, given how much of its day and night runs on its own schedule.

Other places on the same time

Plenty of places keep the same time as Las Vegas on Pacific Time. Here are a few to jump to:

• Los Angeles time now
• San Francisco time now
• Seattle time now
• California time now

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

Questions people ask

What time is it in Las Vegas right now?

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

Is Las Vegas on PST or PDT right now?

Go by the dates. Las Vegas is on PDT from the second Sunday of March to the first Sunday of November. The rest of the year, from early November round to early March, it is on PST. Find where today falls between those two Sundays and you will know.

Is Las Vegas on Mountain Time?

No, a common mix-up. Despite sitting inland east of California, Nevada keeps Pacific Time, so Las Vegas is on the same clock as Los Angeles, not Mountain Time like neighbouring Arizona.

What time zone is Las Vegas in?

Pacific Time, eight hours behind UTC in winter and seven hours behind in summer. It is the same zone as Los Angeles, San Francisco, and the rest of the US West Coast.

How many hours behind New York is Las Vegas?

Three hours behind, all year. Both change their clocks on the same dates, so the three hour gap never changes.

What is the IANA name for Las Vegas time?

It is America/Los_Angeles in the IANA time zone database, the time data your phone and your computer use. The whole US Pacific zone runs on this 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 America/Los_Angeles identifier. https://www.iana.org/time-zones
2. U.S. Code, Title 15, Section 260a: the Uniform Time Act of 1966, as amended by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which sets the daylight saving dates. Office of the Law Revision Counsel. https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title15-section260a
3. U.S. Department of Transportation, Standard Time Zone Boundaries under 49 CFR Part 71. https://www.transportation.gov/regulations/time-act
4. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Time and Frequency Division, the source of official time for the United States. https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division