UK time, explained
BST. British Summer Time.
UK time is BST right now — British Summer Time, UTC+1. It is 7:48 AM in London.
Where you are
—
Your own clock, worked out when the page opens.
Sunrise
7:23 AM
10 h 47 min of daylight.
Sunset
6:10 PM
Golden hour from 5:24 PM.
The next change
25 Oct
BST to GMT: the clocks go back an hour. Sunset moves from 5:49 PM to 4:47 PM.
GMT and BST are two clocks, an hour apart.
“UK time” is a place's clock, not a fixed offset. From the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October it is British Summer Time, UTC+1; the rest of the year it is Greenwich Mean Time, the same hour as UTC. Writing GMT in July, or reading a GMT meeting as a BST one, moves it by an hour — which is why this page never writes one for the other, and why every Sol page names the zone as the tables have it for the instant in question.
The zone id is Europe/London. UK time is the clock of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands; Ireland keeps the same hours under Europe/Dublin and Portugal under Europe/Lisbon, each with names of its own.
The changes in 2026.
The light in London now.
You stand at the middle of London’s horizon. The dots are the sun’s path today. Walk the hours, or drag the sky to turn it.
How it knows.
The browser’s own tables
Every time here is read from the zone tables your browser carries, the IANA database by its zone id (America/Los_Angeles, not “Pacific”), never from an offset typed by hand. A zone’s name is what the tables say for the moment asked: PDT in a Pacific summer, PST in its winter.
Hours the clocks change
A clock change removes an hour in spring and repeats one in autumn. Both are reported rather than moved: an hour that does not exist is named, with the time the clock reads instead, and an hour that happens twice is given both ways.
The light beside the clock
An hour alone says nothing about the sky, so each clock stands beside its day’s light, worked out for the city from the sun’s position. The pages are rebuilt every night, and every time is worked out again in your browser when the page opens.
Convert it, or read another clock.
London → New Yorkany hour, both dates LondonBST · UTC+1 Pacific time, explainedPST or PDT, and when Mountain time, explainedMST or MDT, and when Central time, explainedCST or CDT, and when Eastern time, explainedEST or EDT, and whenEvery place, its own light.
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