Forex Time Zone Converter

How the forex time zone converter works

Forex sessions are set in each financial centre’s own local time: Sydney and Tokyo in the morning there, London and New York during their business day. Type your city, pick a date, and the converter turns all four into your time, using the real time zone rules for that date. That means daylight-saving changes in the US, UK, Europe and Australia are applied on the right days.

1. Pick your city. Over 146 cities are built in, and you can also type any time zone name (like Europe/Athens). The page starts with the time zone your device reports, and you can change it.
2. Pick a date. Today by default. Choose a date next week or next month to check a time before a clock change.
3. Read the sessions and the week. The table gives each session in your time, GMT and broker server time. The week chart shows where the sessions overlap.
4. Convert a time. Turn a New York news time, a GMT time or an MT4 server time into your local time, and see which sessions are open at that moment.

Forex session times in popular time zones

These tables use the commonly quoted session windows (Sydney 7am–4pm, Tokyo 9am–6pm, London 8am–5pm, New York 8am–5pm, each in its own local time), converted with each zone’s clock rules. Times are 24-hour. Because the US, UK, Europe and Australia change their clocks on different dates, the same session lands at a different local time in January and July.

There is no official definition of a forex session; these are business-hours conventions used by traders and brokers. Your broker’s trading hours apply to your account. For a live view of what’s open right now, see forex market hours.

When does the forex market open in my time zone?

The forex week opens at 5:00 pm New York time on Sunday and closes at 5:00 pm New York time on Friday. Here’s when that is around the world:

Friday’s close is at the same local time on the Friday, five days later. Spreads are often wide in the first hour after the Sunday open, when few banks are active.

Why the sessions shift in March, October and November

The US moves its clocks on the second Sunday in March and the first Sunday in November. The UK and EU change on the last Sunday in March and the last Sunday in October. Australia’s south-east goes the other way: clocks go forward on the first Sunday in October and back on the first Sunday in April. Japan doesn’t use daylight saving at all.

So for a few weeks each spring and autumn, the gap between London and New York is four hours instead of the usual five, and the London–New York overlap starts an hour earlier in London time. If you trade from a country without daylight saving (the Gulf, India, most of Africa and Asia), every session moves by an hour in your time at least twice a year. Step 5 above lists the next changes and what they do to your schedule.

What is broker server time?

Many MetaTrader 4 and 5 brokers run their server clock at GMT+2 in the northern winter and GMT+3 in the summer, following US daylight-saving dates. That keeps the New York 5 pm close at exactly midnight on the server, so a daily candle covers one full trading day and there are five daily candles a week instead of six. Not every broker does this, so check yours; the time shown in MT4’s Market Watch window is the server time.

TradingView charts default to your exchange’s or your own time zone instead, which is why candle times can look different from MT4. You can change the chart time zone in TradingView by clicking the clock at the bottom right of the chart.

Moving your symbols over from MT4 or another platform? The TradingView Ticker Converter turns a ticker list into an importable TradingView watchlist. For trade planning, try the position size calculator.

ChartWatch is independent and not affiliated with TradingView or any broker. Session windows are conventions, not exchange rules.

FAQ

More free TradingView tools