Current time in Nairobi

East Africa Time, three hours ahead of UTC

Nairobi uses East Africa Time (EAT), three hours ahead of UTC, with no daylight saving. Kenya shares it with Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia and Somalia, so the whole region does business on one clock. Moscow, Istanbul and Riyadh have the same offset. London is three hours behind Nairobi in winter and two in summer, and New York eight or seven hours behind.

Swahili time starts at sunrise

In Swahili the hours are counted from dawn and from dusk instead of from midnight and noon. Seven in the morning is saa moja asubuhi, “hour one of the morning”; noon is saa sita, “hour six”; seven in the evening is saa moja usiku, “hour one of the night”. The system fits the equator, where the sun rises at about 06:30 every day of the year. When a time is agreed in Swahili, it is worth confirming which count is meant, because the two differ by six hours.

Quarter-hour offsets in the colonial years

Kenya’s clock was less tidy in the first half of the twentieth century. Under British administration Nairobi moved from UTC+2:30 to UTC+3 in 1928, back to UTC+2:30 in 1930, and then to UTC+2:45 later in the decade, before settling on UTC+3 in 1942. It has not changed since. The equatorial day leaves no reason to: sunrise and sunset in Nairobi shift by only about half an hour over the whole year.

Nairobi: time zone at a glance

Time zone

Africa/Nairobi

UTC offset

UTC+3, all year

Clock changes

None scheduled

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

Plan a meeting in Nairobi

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

How accurate is this clock?

Our clock follows your device. Enable automatic time in your settings; this site does not independently synchronize with an atomic clock.