What Time Is It in Hong Kong Right Now?

Eight ahead, unmoving. Hong Kong keeps UTC+8 the whole year as Hong Kong Time (HKT), and no clock here has moved for the seasons in over four decades. Local time is UTC plus eight hours. From your own zone, the gap is eight less your offset, with a minus sign pushing the two apart rather than together: UTC+1 trails by seven hours, UTC-5 by thirteen.

• Time zone: UTC+8 (HKT)

• Daylight saving: Abolished, none since 1979

• IANA identifier: Asia/Hong_Kong

• Zones territory-wide: One

• Land boundary: With mainland China only

Hong Kong Time (HKT) and Its UTC Offset

An ordinance left to lapse. Summer time was used on and off here across four decades, in schemes tied variously to wartime, postwar recovery and the oil crisis. Each run needed an ordinance behind it, and after the final one in 1979 the enabling law was simply not renewed: the savings were judged negligible against the disruption, and nothing has replaced it since.

Out of step with the mainland. That lapse produced an oddity. The clocks here had already been still for years when the mainland began a summer-time trial of its own, so through those trial summers the two sides read different hours despite sharing a standard offset. Macau settled at much the same point by its own route, and all three have run level since the mainland dropped its experiment.

No step at the boundary. The only land crossing leads to mainland China, which keeps the identical offset with no seasonal change, so nothing on a watch alters going either way. Macau and Taipei read the same hour too.

A long way to a different hour. From here you travel several hundred kilometres before the clock changes at all: west across the water to Vietnam sets it back an hour, north-east towards Japan and South Korea puts it forward one. Neither of those moves seasonally either, so both steps are the same in every month.

Work from local noon. Hong Kong reaches midday at 04:00 UTC. Nine in the morning in London is five in the afternoon here, four once Britain is on summer time; nine in New York is ten at night here, nine once the Americans spring forward.

Business Hours, Trading Hours and Severe Weather

A long financial day. Offices generally run Monday to Friday from around nine to six, and the calendar mixes Gregorian public holidays with lunar ones, so closures move about the year rather than sitting on fixed dates. Weekends are Saturday and Sunday.

When the weather decides. Few places let a warning signal rewrite the working day this formally. When the typhoon signal reaches the eighth level or a black rainstorm warning goes up, offices and schools close on a published rule rather than an improvised one. The exchange used to close with them; it now keeps trading through both.

Does Hong Kong have its own time zone?
Yes, under its own name and database record, even though the offset matches the mainland exactly.

Which nearby places share the Hong Kong clock?
Manila, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Perth all read the same hour, none of them changing seasonally.

When does the date change in Hong Kong compared with UTC?
At 16:00 UTC. From then the territory is on the following calendar day while European offices are still at their desks.

What are the trading hours of the Hong Kong stock exchange?
A morning session from half past nine until midday and an afternoon session from one until four, with a closing auction immediately after.

Does the clock change for Lunar New Year?
No. The offset holds through the holiday; only the closures move, since the festival is set by the lunar calendar.

Has Hong Kong ever been on a clock other than UTC+8?
Yes. Tokyo time was imposed during the occupation years of the Second World War, and summer time raised it an hour in the years that was in force.

Related Guides

• China time zone

• Macau time zone

• Taiwan time zone

• Singapore time zone

• UTC time converter

• Asia time zones