Los Angeles Time Now

What this page shows

So you want to know what time it is in Los Angeles right now. Maybe you have a call with someone on the US West Coast, a flight to catch, a show or game starting 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 Los Angeles 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 Los Angeles and keeps itself right on its own, even across the days when the clocks change. Whether LA is on its winter or its summer setting at the time, the clock shows the correct local time.

Los Angeles changes its clocks twice a year

Here is the part worth knowing about Los Angeles time. LA 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 Los Angeles 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 Los Angeles is in

Los Angeles runs on Pacific Time, the zone of the US West Coast, eight hours behind UTC in winter and seven hours behind in summer. It is the most populated city in the zone, which it shares with San Francisco, Seattle, and the rest of the coast.

LA is the city that anchors Pacific Time in most people's minds. It sits three hours behind New York, the classic West Coast gap, and that three hour lag shapes a great deal of American life, from television schedules to the rhythm of a working day that runs across both coasts. With Hollywood here, a large slice of the country's entertainment is made and scheduled on this clock.

How to tell if Los Angeles is on PST or PDT right now

Los Angeles 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 LA 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, Los Angeles 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 Los Angeles to other cities

The cities that share North America's daylight saving schedule stay a fixed distance from Los Angeles 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 Los Angeles.

A few quick examples

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

Say it is 12 noon in Los Angeles. 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 Los Angeles 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 Los Angeles time

Los Angeles sits at about 34 degrees north, fairly far south for a major US city, so the length of the day swings only moderately across the year. Around midsummer there are roughly fourteen and a half hours between sunrise and sunset, and around midwinter still close to ten, a gentler spread than the northern cities of the coast.

On the clock-against-sun question, Los Angeles is a close match. The city sits almost exactly on the meridian Pacific Standard Time is built on, so in winter the sun is at its highest within a few minutes of 12 noon by the clock. In summer, on PDT, the clock runs an hour ahead of the sun, like the rest of the country, which is the point of the change: more daylight in the evening.

Other places on the same time

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

• 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 Los Angeles right now?

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

Is Los Angeles on PST or PDT right now?

Go by the dates. LA 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.

How many hours behind New York is Los Angeles?

Three hours behind, all year. Both cities change their clocks on the same dates, so the three hour gap between the West and East Coasts never changes.

What time zone is Los Angeles in?

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

What is the time difference between Los Angeles and London?

London is normally eight hours ahead of Los Angeles. The two change their clocks on slightly different dates, so for a couple of short windows in spring and autumn that gap shifts by an hour.

What is the IANA name for Los Angeles time?

It is America/Los_Angeles in the IANA time zone database, the time data your phone and your computer use. It carries both the PST and PDT 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 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