Time Zones Around The World, In Every Country | News - The Guardian

Increasing globalisation in the Victorian era meant a need to standardise time zones, as businesses began to operate across wider areas and world travel became easier with the advent of the railway. The Meridian Conference in 1884, attended by representatives from various countries, led to the creation of the 24 time zones we use today.

The zones are based on 24 longitudinal meridian lines that run from the north to south poles. The prime meridian, determined by the 1884 conference, runs through Greenwich, in the UK, giving us Greenwich Mean Time. Other time zones are counted to the east and west of this line, either plus or minus hours from GMT.

Each country sets its own time zone within this framework, so some zones extend beyond the meridian for convenience, while others, like India, take on half hours. Kiribati even extended its time zone 600 miles east in 1995, to include Caroline Island in the same zone (and, as it straddled the Date Line opposite the GMT meridian, the same date) as the country's other islands.

The development of the world wide web in the 1990s led to calls for a standardised internet time, as people in cyberspace were no longer bound by geography. Swatch even invented a concept called beat time that split each day into 1,000 beats on a decimal system, eradicating time zones entirely.

For those of you who don't operate on Internet Time, this spreadsheet shows the time zone in 195 countries, extracted from our World Factfiles series.

• DATA: time zones around the world

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Time zones around the world

Country	ISO country code	Time zone, GMT +/- hrs (min difference when > one)	Max difference when > one
Source: Greenwich Mean Time
Afghanistan	AFG	4.5
Albania	ALB	1
Algeria	DZA	1
Andorra	AND	1
Angola	AGO	1
Antigua and Barbuda	ATG	-4
Argentina	ARG	-3
Armenia	ARM	4
Australia	AUS	8	10
Austria	AUT	1
Azerbaijan	AZE	4
Bahamas	BHS	-5
Bahrain	BHR	3
Bangladesh	BGD	6
Barbados	BRB	-4
Belarus	BLR	2
Belgium	BEL	1
Belize	BLZ	-6
Benin	BEN	1
Bhutan	BTN	6
Bolivia	BOL	-4
Bosnia and Herzegovina	BIH	1
Botswana	BWA	2
Brazil	BRA	-2	-5
Brunei	BRN	8
Bulgaria	BGR	2
Burkina Faso	BFA	0
Burundi	BDI	3
Cambodia	KHM	7
Cameroon	CMR	1
Canada	CAN	-3.5	-8
Cape Verde	CPV	-1
Central African Republic	CAF	1
Chad	TCD	1
Chile	CHL	-4
China	CHN	8
Colombia	COL	-5
Comoros	COM	3
Congo, Republic of the	COG	1
Congo, Democratic Republic of the	COD	1	2
Costa Rica	CRI	-6
Cote d'Ivoire	CIV	0
Croatia	HRV	1
Cuba	CUB	-5
Cyprus	CYP	2
Czech Republic	CZE	1
Denmark	DNK	1
Djibouti	DJI	3
Dominica	DMA	-4
Dominican Republic	DOM	-4
Ecuador	ECU	-5
Egypt	EGY	2
El Salvador	SLV	-6
Equatorial Guinea	GNQ	1
Eritrea	ERI	3
Estonia	EST	2
Ethiopia	ETH	3
Fiji	FJI	12
Finland	FIN	2
France	FRA	1
Gabon	GAB	1
The Gambia	GMB	0
Georgia	GEO	4
Germany	DEU	1
Ghana	GHA	0
Greece	GRC	2
Grenada	GRD	-4
Guatemala	GTM	-6
Guinea	GIN	0
Guinea-Bissau	GNB	0
Guyana	GUY	-3
Haiti	HTI	-5
Honduras	HND	-6
Hungary	HUN	1
Iceland	ISL	0
India	IND	5.5
Indonesia	IDN	7	9
Iran	IRN	3.5
Iraq	IRQ	3
Ireland	IRL	0
Israel and Palestinian territories	ISR	2
Italy	ITA	1
Jamaica	JAM	-5
Japan	JPN	9
Jordan	JOR	2
Kazakhstan	KAZ	4	6
Kenya	KEN	3
Kiribati	KIR	12	14
Korea, North	PRK	9
Korea, South	KOR	9
Kosovo	1
Kuwait	KWT	3
Kyrgyzstan	KGZ	5
Laos	LAO	7
Latvia	LVA	2
Lebanon	LBN	2
Lesotho	LSO	3
Liberia	LBR	0
Libya	LBY	2
Liechtenstein	LIE	1
Lithuania	LTU	2
Luxembourg	LUX	1
Macedonia	MKD	1
Madagascar	MDG	3
Malawi	MWI	2
Malaysia	MYS	8
Maldives	MDV	5
Mali	MLI	0
Malta	MLT	1
Marshall Islands	MHL	12
Mauritania	MRT	0
Mauritius	MUS	4
Mexico	MEX	-6	-8
Micronesia, Federated States of	FSM	11	12
Moldova	MDA	2
Monaco	MCO	1
Mongolia	MNG	8
Montenegro	MNE	1
Morocco	MAR	0
Mozambique	MOZ	2
Myanmar (formerly Burma)	MMR	6.5
Namibia	NAM	1
Nauru	NRU	12
Nepal	NPL	5.75
Netherlands	NLD	1
New Zealand	NZL	12
Nicaragua	NIC	-6
Niger	NER	1
Nigeria	NGA	1
Norway	NOR	1
Oman	OMN	4
Pakistan	PAK	5
Palau	PLW	9
Panama	PAN	-5
Papua New Guinea	PNG	10
Paraguay	PRY	-4
Peru	PER	-5
Philippines	PHL	8
Poland	POL	1
Portugal	PRT	0
Qatar	QAT	3
Romania	ROM	2
Russia	RUS	2	12
Rwanda	RWA	2
Saint Kitts and Nevis	KNA	-4
Saint Lucia	LCA	-4
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	VCT	-4
Samoa	WSM	-11
San Marino	SMR	1
Sao Tome and Principe	STP	0
Saudi Arabia	SAU	3
Senegal	SEN	0
Serbia	SRB	1
Seychelles	SYC	4
Sierra Leone	SLE	0
Singapore	SGP	8
Slovakia	SVK	1
Slovenia	SVN	1
Solomon Islands	SLB	11
Somalia	SOM	3
South Africa	ZAF	2
Spain	ESP	1
Sri Lanka	LKA	5.5
Sudan	SDN	3
Suriname	SUR	-3
Swaziland	SWZ	2
Sweden	SWE	1
Switzerland	CHE	1
Syria	SYR	2
Taiwan	TWN	8
Tajikistan	TJK	5
Tanzania	TZA	3
Thailand	THA	7
Timor-Leste (formerly East Timor)	TMP	9
Togo	TGO	0
Tonga	TON	13
Trinidad and Tobago	TTO	-4
Tunisia	TUN	1
Turkey	TUR	2
Turkmenistan	TKM	5
Tuvalu	TUV	12
Uganda	UGA	3
Ukraine	UKR	2
United Arab Emirates	ARE	4
United Kingdom	GBR	0
United States of America	USA	-5	-10
Uruguay	URY	-3
Uzbekistan	UZB	5
Vanuatu	VUT	11
Vatican City (Holy See)	VAT	1
Venezuela	VEN	-4.5
Vietnam	VNM	7
Yemen	YEM	3
Zambia	ZMB	2
Zimbabwe	ZWE	2