London Time Now

What this page shows

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

London changes its clocks twice a year

Here is the part worth knowing about London time. London 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.

So there are two settings behind London 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 London is in

London time has a claim no other city can make. Greenwich, a borough in the south-east of the city, is home to the prime meridian, the line of zero longitude that the whole world measures its time zones from. Greenwich Mean Time is named after it, and every other zone in the world is counted as so many hours ahead of or behind that line.

So in the winter, when London is on GMT, the city is sitting right on the world's zero point, at UTC plus 0. In the summer it springs forward to UTC plus 1. The rest of the United Kingdom keeps the same time as London, and so do Ireland and mainland Portugal, all of them at zero offset in winter and one hour ahead in summer.

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

London 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 London 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, London 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 London to other cities

London sits at the zero point in winter and one hour ahead in summer, which makes it a handy place to convert from. The cities that share Europe's daylight saving schedule stay a fixed distance from London all year, while the ones that do not change their clocks can shift by an hour between London's winter and summer. Here is the quick reference, assuming it is 12 noon in London.

A few quick examples

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

Say it is 12 noon in London. 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. London and New York both change their clocks, but not on the same dates, so for two or three weeks in spring and about a week in 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 one for the southern hemisphere. Sydney runs daylight saving in the opposite half of the year, so the gap between London and Sydney swings around quite a bit, from roughly nine hours to eleven across the seasons. It is the clearest case of why a remembered offset can let you down.

A couple of things about London time

Because London sits a fair way north, at about 51 and a half degrees of latitude, the length of the day swings a lot across the year. Around midsummer there are roughly sixteen and a half hours between sunrise and sunset, with the light lingering late into the evening. Around midwinter that drops to under eight hours, and it is dark by late afternoon.

And because London is right on the prime meridian, the clock and the sun line up neatly in the winter. On GMT, the sun is at its highest at around 12 noon, near enough. In the summer, on BST, the clock runs an hour ahead of the sun, so the sun peaks closer to 1 in the afternoon.

Other places on the same time

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

• Edinburgh 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 London right now?

The clock near the top of this page is the answer, and it updates every second. Just remember that London 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 London time.

Is London on GMT or BST right now?

Go by the dates. London 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.

What time zone is London in?

London is on Greenwich Mean Time, at zero offset, in the winter, and British Summer Time, one hour ahead of UTC, in the summer. The city is home to the prime meridian at Greenwich, the line the world's time zones are measured from.

How many hours ahead of New York is London?

Normally five hours ahead. The two cities both 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.

Does London use daylight saving time?

Yes. London moves an hour ahead to British Summer Time from the last Sunday of March, then back to Greenwich Mean Time on the last Sunday of October. The whole United Kingdom changes on the same dates.

What is the time difference between London and India?

India is five and a half hours ahead of London in the British winter and four and a half hours ahead in summer. India does not change its clocks, so the gap moves only because London does.

What is the IANA name for London 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, 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. 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 London switches between GMT and British Summer Time. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2002/262/contents/made
3. Royal Observatory Greenwich (Royal Museums Greenwich), home of the prime meridian and Greenwich Mean Time. https://www.rmg.co.uk
4. National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the United Kingdom's national measurement institute and keeper of UK time. https://www.npl.co.uk