Current time in London

Greenwich Mean Time in winter, British Summer Time in summer

London is on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT, UTC+0) from late October to late March and on British Summer Time (BST, UTC+1) for the rest of the year. The prime meridian, longitude zero, runs through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, in south-east London. It was chosen as the world’s reference line at an international conference in Washington in 1884.

Always an hour behind Paris

Clocks go forward at 01:00 on the last Sunday of March and back at 02:00 on the last Sunday of October. The rest of Europe changes at the same instant, so London stays one hour behind Paris, Berlin and Madrid all year and shares its time with Lisbon and Dublin. The gap to New York is five hours, apart from a few weeks each spring and autumn when North America has already changed and Europe has not.

A country that has experimented with its clocks

Before the railways, each British town kept local time; Bristol ran about ten minutes behind London. Greenwich time became the legal standard across Great Britain in 1880. Summer time followed in 1916. During the Second World War the country ran two hours ahead of GMT in summer, and from 1968 to 1971 it kept summer time all year, an experiment that Parliament voted to end.

London: time zone at a glance

Time zone

Europe/London

Standard time

UTC+0

Daylight saving time

UTC+1

Clock changes in 2026

Sunday, March 29, 2026: forward 1 hour

Sunday, October 25, 2026: back 1 hour

Clock changes in 2027

Sunday, March 28, 2027: forward 1 hour

Sunday, October 31, 2027: back 1 hour

Dates reflect the rules in force when this page was last updated. Governments can change them at short notice.

Plan a meeting in London

Use the actual meeting date. Seasonal clock changes can alter the time difference.

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