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World Time Zone Map
A full-width map of the world's time zones with live local clocks, the lit and dark halves of the planet, and the meridian where it is currently solar noon.
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Find Any Place on the Map
Type a city or country for its live time, date, UTC offset and current weather.
The system
How the World Was Divided into Zones
Standard time is younger than the railway, and it exists because of it.
Before the 1800s every town kept its own solar time: noon was whenever the sun stood highest over that particular place. That worked perfectly well until trains made it possible to travel far enough, fast enough, that the discrepancy mattered. A timetable is impossible when every station's clock disagrees with its neighbour by a few minutes.
British railways adopted a single standard time in the 1840s, and the idea spread. At the International Meridian Conference in Washington in 1884, Greenwich was chosen as the prime meridian and the world was divided into 24 zones of 15 degrees each — one hour of the Earth's rotation per zone. Sandford Fleming, a Scottish-Canadian engineer, had proposed the scheme after missing a train in Ireland because of a printed timetable error.
Adoption took decades. France kept Paris Mean Time until 1911; Nepal only fixed its current offset in 1986; Saudi Arabia used a system where clocks were reset to zero at sunset until 1968.
Extremes
The Edges of the Map
| Record | Where | Offset | Why it is unusual |
|---|---|---|---|
| First into a new day | Kiritimati, Kiribati | UTC+14 | Kiribati moved the date line east in 1995 so its whole territory shares one date |
| Last into a new day | Baker and Howland Islands | UTC−12 | Uninhabited US territories; 26 hours behind Kiritimati |
| Widest single zone | China | UTC+8 | One zone across a span that would geometrically hold five |
| Most zones in one country | France | 12 zones | Because of overseas territories, ahead of Russia's 11 |
| Quarter-hour offset | Nepal | UTC+5:45 | Set to the meridian of Mount Gaurishankar rather than a round number |
| Another quarter-hour | Chatham Islands | UTC+12:45 | New Zealand territory, 45 minutes ahead of the mainland |
| Half-hour, huge population | India and Sri Lanka | UTC+5:30 | A single zone for 1.5 billion people across 3,000 km |
| No time zone at all | Antarctica | varies | All meridians meet at the pole, so each station uses its supply base's time |
Reading the shading
Day, Night and the Terminator
The Solar Noon Line
The yellow meridian marks where the sun is at its highest right now. It sweeps westward at roughly 15 degrees an hour, completing a lap each day. Watch it for a minute and you can see the Earth turning.
The Shaded Half
Roughly half the planet is in darkness at any moment, centred on the meridian opposite solar noon. This map draws it as a straight band; the real terminator is a curve that tilts with the seasons.
Blue Pins
A pin turns blue when the local hour is before 6am or after 7pm — a rough proxy for "people there are probably asleep". Useful before you send a message or propose a call.
The Tropics
The two dashed horizontal lines are the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, at 23.4 degrees north and south. They mark the furthest the solar noon line can travel from the equator, which is exactly the Earth's axial tilt.
Answers
World Time Zone Map Questions
How do I read this map?
The vertical bands are one-hour time zones, numbered along the top with their UTC offset. The darkened half of the map is where it is currently night. The yellow line is the meridian where the sun is directly overhead — solar noon. Each pin shows a city's live local time and turns blue when it is night there.
Why are real time zones not straight lines?
Because they are political rather than geometric. The bands here show the theoretical 15-degree slices, but actual borders bend around countries: China uses a single zone across a width that would geometrically span five, Spain sits on Central European time despite being west of Greenwich, and India runs on a half-hour offset. The bands tell you roughly where you are; the pins tell you what the clock actually says.
What is the International Date Line?
The line near 180 degrees longitude where the calendar date changes. Cross it westward and you lose a day; cross it eastward and you gain one. It zigzags to keep island groups on one date, which is why Kiritimati sits at UTC+14 and is the first inhabited place to reach each new day.
How many time zones are there?
Thirty-eight in current use, not twenty-four, because several countries use half-hour or quarter-hour offsets. Nepal is at UTC+5:45, India and Sri Lanka at +5:30, the Chatham Islands at +12:45. The extremes run from UTC−12 to UTC+14, a spread of 26 hours, which means three different dates can be in use at once.
Does the map account for daylight saving?
The pin times do, because they come from your browser's IANA time zone database. The painted bands do not — they show geographic zones rather than current offsets, so during summer a pin may sit one band away from where its clock suggests.
Why does the night region change shape through the year?
On this map it stays a simple half because it tracks longitude only. In reality the terminator tilts with the seasons because of the Earth's 23.4-degree axial tilt, which is what gives the poles their midnight sun and polar night. The tropic lines marked on the map are the limits of where the sun can be directly overhead.