Time Zones in Asia

Last reviewed on 2026-10-01.

The 49 countries covered on this site span standard times from UTC+2 in the eastern Mediterranean to UTC+9 in Japan, Korea and eastern Indonesia — seven hours from end to end. In between are some of the most unusual clocks in the world: India’s half-hour offset of UTC+5:30, Nepal’s UTC+5:45, a single time zone for the whole of China, and three zones across Indonesia. Only a handful of Asian countries, all at the western end of the continent, still change their clocks for daylight saving time. The table below gives the current position for every country, and the sections after it explain how Asia’s time zones came to look the way they do.

UTC offsets for every Asian country

Offsets are standard time. Where a country observes daylight saving time (DST), its summer offset is shown as well. Time-zone rules change from time to time by government decision, so the table reflects the position as of the date at the top of this page.

Half-hour and quarter-hour offsets

Most of the world keeps time in whole hours from UTC, but Asia has more exceptions than any other continent. Five of the countries in the table use a half-hour offset — Iran (UTC+3:30), Afghanistan (UTC+4:30), India and Sri Lanka (UTC+5:30), and Myanmar (UTC+6:30) — and Nepal goes further still with UTC+5:45.

The reason is usually geographical. A country that sits between two whole-hour meridians can choose a meridian that runs through its own territory instead of rounding to the nearest hour. India Standard Time is based on the meridian at 82.5°E, which passes close to the city of Prayagraj (Allahabad) and lies roughly in the middle of the country. Iran’s time is likewise based on a meridian near the centre of the country. Nepal’s UTC+5:45 corresponds to the meridian at 86.25°E, which runs through the east of the country, near the mountain Gauri Shankar; the offset also has the effect of keeping Nepal’s clocks distinct from India’s.

Nepal is the only country whose national time is a 45-minute offset. The practical result is that the time difference between Kathmandu and Delhi is just 15 minutes, while Kathmandu and neighbouring Bhutan are 15 minutes apart in the other direction.

India’s single zone is a compromise for a country that stretches almost 30 degrees of longitude. In the far north-east, the sun rises around two hours earlier than in the far west, and in winter it can be dark in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh by late afternoon. Proposals for a second, earlier zone for the north-east have been discussed repeatedly, and Assam’s tea gardens have long kept an informal “tea-garden time” about an hour ahead of IST, but the country still runs on one official clock.

China’s single time zone

China stretches across roughly 60 degrees of longitude — enough, in principle, for five time zones — yet the whole country officially runs on Beijing Time, UTC+8. During the Republican era China was divided into several zones, but after 1949 the new government adopted a single national time, and it has stayed that way. The effect is most obvious in the far west. In Kashgar, close to the borders with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, the sun can rise after 9 a.m. in winter by the official clock. Many people in Xinjiang informally use “Xinjiang time”, two hours behind Beijing, for daily life, and businesses often keep hours adapted to the local sun.

One consequence of China’s choice is the largest time difference across any international land border in the world. On the border with Afghanistan, high in the Pamir at the end of the Wakhan Corridor, the clocks jump by three and a half hours, from UTC+8 to UTC+4:30. China’s border with Pakistan brings a three-hour change, and its borders with India and Nepal involve the oddly sized gaps of two and a half hours and two and a quarter hours.

Taiwan, Mongolia (apart from its far west), the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei also keep UTC+8, which makes it the most widely used offset in Asia by population. Singapore and peninsular Malaysia are arguably an hour “ahead” of where their longitude would place them; both moved to UTC+8 in 1982 so that the peninsula would share a clock with Malaysia’s states on Borneo.

Indonesia’s three time zones

Indonesia is the only country in Southeast Asia with more than one time zone. Its islands stretch more than 5,000 km from west to east, and it divides them into three zones:

• Western Indonesia Time (WIB), UTC+7 — Sumatra, Java, and western and central Kalimantan. This zone contains Jakarta and the large majority of the population.
• Central Indonesia Time (WITA), UTC+8 — Bali, Sulawesi, the Lesser Sunda Islands of Nusa Tenggara, and southern, eastern and northern Kalimantan.
• Eastern Indonesia Time (WIT), UTC+9 — the Maluku Islands and the Indonesian provinces of New Guinea.

Proposals to merge all three into a single national zone at UTC+8 have been raised more than once, mainly to align business hours across the country, but none has been adopted. The Southeast Asia map shows how the zones fall across the archipelago; Timor-Leste, which shares the island of Timor with Indonesia, keeps UTC+9, an hour ahead of Indonesian West Timor on UTC+8.

Kazakhstan and Mongolia

Two of Asia’s largest countries have recently simplified their clocks. Kazakhstan used two zones for many years, UTC+5 in the west and UTC+6 in the east, including Almaty and Astana. On 1 March 2024 the eastern regions moved back an hour, and the whole country now keeps UTC+5, the same time as Uzbekistan. Mongolia keeps two zones: most of the country, including Ulaanbaatar, is on UTC+8, while the westernmost provinces, including Bayan-Ölgii, Uvs and Khovd, are on UTC+7. The Central Asia map shows the wider region, where Kyrgyzstan’s UTC+6 is now the eastern outlier.

Daylight saving time in West Asia

Daylight saving time is rare in Asia. Close to the equator the length of the day hardly changes through the year, so there is little to gain, and most countries that tried it — including China in the late 1980s, South Korea around the 1988 Seoul Olympics, and Pakistan and Bangladesh more recently — have given it up.

The exceptions are clustered on the eastern Mediterranean. Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Cyprus all move from UTC+2 in winter to UTC+3 in summer. Cyprus follows the European Union’s rules, changing on the last Sundays of March and October. Israel changes in late March and late October. Palestine sets its own dates, which sometimes differ from Israel’s by days or weeks, so for part of the year the clocks in Jerusalem and Ramallah can disagree by an hour. In 2023 Lebanon briefly announced that it would delay the switch to summer time, then reversed the decision after days of confusion in which different institutions kept different times.

Elsewhere in the region the trend has been to abolish the clock change, often by staying permanently on what had been summer time. Turkey stayed on UTC+3 all year from 2016. Jordan and Syria did the same in 2022, which is why both now share UTC+3 with Saudi Arabia and Iraq rather than the UTC+2 of their western neighbours in winter. Iran abolished daylight saving time in 2022 and now keeps UTC+3:30 throughout the year. Iraq, Armenia and Azerbaijan stopped changing their clocks earlier. For the countries in this part of the continent, see the West Asia map.

Russia, the date line and the edges of Asia

The International Date Line does not cross any of the 49 countries on this site. All of them lie between UTC+2 and UTC+9, on the same side of the line, so travelling between any two of them never involves skipping or repeating a calendar day. The date line passes instead through the Bering Strait, between Russia’s Chukotka Peninsula and Alaska, before bending around Pacific island groups further south.

Russia, which is not covered among the 49 here, is the country that extends Asia’s time span. It uses eleven time zones in total, from UTC+2 in Kaliningrad, on the Baltic, to UTC+12 in Kamchatka and Chukotka in the far north-east. Only France, thanks to its overseas territories, uses more. For more on how Russia is usually classified, see Is Russia in Asia?

Working out time differences

Because Asia’s offsets do not all differ in whole hours, mental arithmetic can catch travellers out. A flight from Delhi to Karachi sets the clock back half an hour; a trip from Beijing to Delhi sets it back two and a half hours; and from Beijing to Tehran the difference is four and a half hours. The city-to-city pages in the distance calculator list the time difference alongside the distance for each pair, and the Asian capitals guide gives the capital of every country in the table above.

Frequently asked questions

How many time zones are there in Asia?

Across the 49 countries covered here, standard time ranges from UTC+2 to UTC+9, using thirteen different standard offsets once the half-hour and quarter-hour ones are counted. Including Russia’s Asian territory, Asia stretches as far as UTC+12.

Why does India use UTC+5:30?

India Standard Time is based on the meridian at 82.5°E, which runs roughly through the middle of the country. That meridian falls halfway between two whole-hour zones, so the offset is five and a half hours.

Why is Nepal’s time zone UTC+5:45?

Nepal bases its time on the meridian at 86.25°E, in the east of the country near the mountain Gauri Shankar. That gives an offset of five hours and 45 minutes, 15 minutes ahead of India.

Does China have more than one time zone?

No. The whole of China officially uses Beijing Time, UTC+8, although many people in Xinjiang informally use a local time two hours behind Beijing.

How many time zones does Indonesia have?

Three: Western Indonesia Time (UTC+7), Central Indonesia Time (UTC+8) and Eastern Indonesia Time (UTC+9).

Which Asian countries use daylight saving time?

Among the 49 countries covered here, only Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Cyprus change their clocks for summer, moving from UTC+2 to UTC+3. Turkey, Jordan, Syria and Iran have all abolished the clock change.

Does Kazakhstan still have two time zones?

No. Since 1 March 2024 the whole of Kazakhstan has used a single time zone, UTC+5.

For other continent-wide overviews, see Flags of Asia, Deserts of Asia, Languages of Asia, Religions of Asia, Rivers of Asia and Mountain ranges of Asia, or browse by region: South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, Central Asia and West Asia.