Eastern Time cities
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Live · ET · America/New_York
Time in New York City
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New York City is on Eastern Time: UTC−5 (EST) in winter and UTC−4 (EDT) from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November. Its database name, America/New_York, labels the whole zone.
- Now in effect
- EST or EDT
- Next change
- Second Sunday in March
- Countdown
- —
- Airports
- JFK · LGA · EWR
Why is the whole Eastern Time Zone called America/New_York?
Phones, browsers and servers – and the live Eastern Time clock on this site – get their rules from the IANA tz database. It does not name zones after abbreviations such as EST, because an abbreviation cannot tell you when the clocks change. Instead each zone is named Area/City, and the database's own guidelines say to give one name to every place whose clocks have agreed since 1970 and to "use the most populous among locations in a region". New York City is the largest city on Eastern Time, so America/New_York stands in for everything from Maine to Georgia. The data file itself headlines the entry "US eastern time, represented by New York", and the reference point it records, 40°42′51″N 74°00′23″W, is next to City Hall in Lower Manhattan.
The name is a label, not a statement that New York sets the rules – Congress does. Places whose clock history since 1970 differs get their own entry: Detroit, Indianapolis and Louisville have separate US identifiers, and Canadian cities use America/Toronto. The Eastern Time cities overview explains those splits. For a calendar invite or a server setting, choose America/New_York rather than a fixed "UTC−05:00", which would be an hour wrong for the roughly 34 weeks a year the city spends on daylight time. The EST vs EDT guide covers the difference in labels.
How did New York switch to standard time in 1883?
Until November 18, 1883, New York kept its own local mean time, set by the sun over Manhattan. City Hall sits about one degree east of the 75th meridian, and because the Earth turns one degree every four minutes, its clock was 3 minutes 58.4 seconds fast of the new railroad Eastern time, according to a report in the Royal Astronomical Society's Monthly Notices quoted in the tz database.
On that Sunday the Western Union time ball on its Lower Manhattan building dropped at the new noon, the mayor ordered city clocks to follow, and New Yorkers heard noon twice: once by the old local time and again almost four minutes later. The tz database records the moment exactly – 12:03:58 local mean time became 12:00:00 EST, or 17:00 UTC.
The city kept going its own way afterwards. When Congress repealed national daylight saving time in 1919, New York kept summer time by local rule: the tz database's separate "NYC" rule runs every summer from 1920 to 1966, with national War Time in between. Only the Uniform Time Act of 1966 brought one national set of dates. The history of Eastern Time follows the national story.
What time does the Times Square ball drop in other time zones?
The ball drop is a time ball turned into a party. The first one was lowered from the flagpole of One Times Square, then the new home of The New York Times, on December 31, 1907, to welcome 1908; it has run every year since except 1942 and 1943, when wartime dimouts darkened the square. Like the old harbor time balls, it marks an exact instant: midnight Eastern Time.
New Year's Eve always falls on standard time, so the ball lands at midnight EST – 05:00 UTC. That is already breakfast time in London and mid-afternoon on New Year's Day in Tokyo and Sydney, while Los Angeles still has three hours of the old year left.
Countdown to the ball drop that opens 2027: —. In your own time zone it lands at Fri, Jan 1, 2027, 05:00 UTC.
| Place | Local time |
|---|---|
| Los Angeles | 9:00 PM PST, Dec 31 |
| Chicago | 11:00 PM CST, Dec 31 |
| New York | 12:00 AM EST, Jan 1 |
| UTC | 5:00 AM, Jan 1 |
| London | 5:00 AM GMT, Jan 1 |
| New Delhi | 10:30 AM IST, Jan 1 |
| Tokyo | 2:00 PM JST, Jan 1 |
| Sydney | 4:00 PM AEDT, Jan 1 |
How does daylight saving time change New York's sunrise and sunset?
- Sunrise today
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- Solar noon
- —
- Sunset today
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- Daylight
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Because Manhattan lies a degree east of the 75°W meridian that EST is built on, the sun reaches its highest point about four minutes before the clock says noon, give or take the seasonal wobble known as the equation of time: 11:54 AM EST at the December solstice. In summer, daylight saving time moves every clock reading an hour later, so solar noon drifts to about 12:58 PM EDT and sunset to 8:31 PM.
The darkest afternoons come before the shortest day. Sunset bottoms out at about 4:28 PM around December 8, while the latest standard-time sunrise, about 7:20 AM, arrives around January 4. The latest sunrise of the whole year on the clock is a daylight-time one: 7:32 AM EDT on November 6, 2027, the last morning before clocks fall back. A day later it is 6:33 AM EST. If the daylight saving time proposals now in Congress made EDT permanent, New York's January sunrises would come at about 8:20 AM. Live figures above use a standard approximation and can differ from almanac values by a minute or so.
| Date | Sunrise | Sunset |
|---|---|---|
| Dec 8, 2026 (earliest sunset) | 7:07 AM EST | 4:28 PM EST |
| Dec 21, 2026 (9 h 15 m) | 7:17 AM EST | 4:32 PM EST |
| Jan 4, 2027 (latest EST sunrise) | 7:20 AM EST | 4:42 PM EST |
| Mar 13 → 14, 2027 (spring forward) | 6:11 → 7:10 AM | 6:00 → 7:02 PM |
| Jun 21, 2027 (15 h 06 m) | 5:25 AM EDT | 8:31 PM EDT |
| Nov 6 → 7, 2027 (fall back) | 7:32 → 6:33 AM | 5:47 → 4:46 PM |
Which counties and airports share New York City's clock?
New York City is made of five whole counties, one per borough: Manhattan is New York County, Brooklyn is Kings County, Queens is Queens County, the Bronx is Bronx County and Staten Island is Richmond County. All five, and the whole of New York State, run on Eastern Time.
The city's three big airports keep the same clock even though one is in another state. JFK (John F. Kennedy International) and LGA (LaGuardia) are in Queens; EWR (Newark Liberty) straddles Newark and Elizabeth in New Jersey. Departure boards at all three show local Eastern Time.
Wall Street is the other reason the world watches this clock: NYSE and Nasdaq trading hours are 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM ET, which is 14:30 UTC in winter and 13:30 UTC in summer. Across the Hudson, Jersey City (2 miles from City Hall) and Newark (9 miles) share the clock, and so does Philadelphia, 80 miles south-west, where the sun runs almost five minutes behind New York's.
- New York City and nearby cities, all on Eastern Time
Frequently asked questions
Does all of New York State use Eastern Time?
Yes. Every part of New York State, from Montauk to Buffalo, is on Eastern Time and follows the same daylight saving dates as New York City.
What is the time difference between New York and London?
London is usually 5 hours ahead of New York. For a few weeks each year it is only 4 hours, because the US and the UK change clocks on different dates: in 2027 that happens from March 14 to March 28 and from October 31 to November 7. See EST to GMT.
What is the time difference between New York and Los Angeles?
Always 3 hours. Los Angeles is on Pacific Time, and both cities change clocks on the same Sundays, so 9:00 AM in New York is 6:00 AM in Los Angeles all year. See EST to PST.
Why does Windows call New York's zone "Eastern Standard Time" even in summer?
"Eastern Standard Time" is the internal name of the Windows zone, shown to users as "(UTC−05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)". It includes the daylight saving rules, so it shows EDT in summer. It corresponds to the IANA zone America/New_York.
Is New York City on the same time as Florida?
Mostly. Miami, Orlando, Tampa and Jacksonville share New York's clock, but the western Florida Panhandle, including Pensacola, is on Central Time, one hour behind. See Florida time zones.
Explore
Washington, DC
Where the US master clock ticks and DST law is written.
Boston
Far east in the zone, with sunsets before 4:15 PM in December.
Stock market hours
NYSE and Nasdaq sessions in ET, UTC and your own time.