What are the Australia time zones?
Australia has 5 time zones, UTC+08:00 to UTC+10:30, as of September 30, 2026. The table shows every zone at an example time, 12:00 PM in Eastern: Sydney, Canberra; type any time or date.
- Time zones
- 5
At 12:00 PM on September 30, 2026 in Eastern: Sydney, Canberra, Australia has 5 time zones and 5 UTC offsets in use.
- UTC offsets in use at that moment
- 5
- Western: Perth
- 10:00 AM AWST · Wed, Sep 30 · UTC+08:00 · no daylight saving
- Central Western: Eucla
- 10:45 AM ACWST · Wed, Sep 30 · UTC+08:45 · no daylight saving
- Central, no DST: Darwin
- 11:30 AM ACST · Wed, Sep 30 · UTC+09:30 · no daylight saving
- Central: Adelaide
- 11:30 AM ACST · Wed, Sep 30 · UTC+09:30 · standard time
- Eastern, no DST: Brisbane
- 12:00 PM AEST · Wed, Sep 30 · UTC+10:00 · no daylight saving
- Eastern: Sydney, Canberra
- 12:00 PM AEST · Wed, Sep 30 · UTC+10:00 · standard time
- Eastern: Melbourne
- 12:00 PM AEST · Wed, Sep 30 · UTC+10:00 · standard time
- Eastern: Hobart
- 12:00 PM AEST · Wed, Sep 30 · UTC+10:00 · standard time
- Lord Howe Island
- 12:30 PM LHST · Wed, Sep 30 · UTC+10:30 · standard time
Answer for the example date Wednesday, September 30, 2026. It changes to today's date when the page loads.
Time zones: 5. At 12:00 PM on September 30, 2026 in Eastern: Sydney, Canberra, Australia has 5 time zones and 5 UTC offsets in use.
How to calculate
Lists the time zones of Australia with the local time, abbreviation, UTC offset, and daylight saving in each, for any time and date.
Example with the default inputs (Time 12:00, In Eastern: Sydney, Canberra, Date September 30, 2026) on the example date Wednesday, September 30, 2026: At 12:00 PM on September 30, 2026 in Eastern: Sydney, Canberra, Australia has 5 time zones and 5 UTC offsets in use.
Method: For the typed time in the chosen zone, find the instant (UTC) it names, then show each listed zone’s clock at that instant with its UTC offset, from the browser’s IANA time zone data.
- The zones are IANA tzdata names from zone1970.tab (tzdata 2026a): Australia/Perth, Australia/Eucla, Australia/Darwin, Australia/Adelaide, Australia/Brisbane, Australia/Sydney, Australia/Melbourne, Australia/Hobart, Australia/Lord_Howe. The browser supplies each zone's offsets and daylight saving rules, so a rule change arrives with a browser update.
- “Time zones” counts the different standard offsets among the listed zones. A zone’s standard offset in a year is the lower of its offsets at 00:00 UTC on January 1 and July 1 of that UTC year.
- “UTC offsets in use” counts the different offsets the listed zones show at that moment.
- Each zone shows its local time, the abbreviation from the browser’s Unicode CLDR English names (left out when CLDR has none), the date as “Tue, Sep 29”, the offset as UTC+hh:mm or UTC−hh:mm, and “daylight saving” when the offset is ahead of the standard offset, “standard time” when the zone’s January 1 and July 1 offsets differ but it is on the standard offset, or “no daylight saving” when they are the same. Because the rule compares January 1 and July 1, a zone that moves its offset for good during a year (Cancún in 2015, Novosibirsk in 2016), or whose January 1 falls in Morocco’s Ramadan change (Casablanca in 2030 to 2033), shows the later offset as “daylight saving” for that year.
- A time that does not exist in the chosen zone (skipped when clocks spring forward) has no answer. A time that occurs twice (when clocks fall back) shows both moments, earlier first, where they differ.
- Dates from 2000 to 2040 work.
Worked examples
Each example is checked against the calculator on every build.
- Time 12:00, In Eastern: Sydney, Canberra, Date 2026-01-15 gives Time zones 5, UTC offsets in use at that moment 6, Western: Perth 9:00 AM AWST · Thu, Jan 15 · UTC+08:00 · no daylight saving, Central Western: Eucla 9:45 AM ACWST · Thu, Jan 15 · UTC+08:45 · no daylight saving, Central, no DST: Darwin 10:30 AM ACST · Thu, Jan 15 · UTC+09:30 · no daylight saving, Central: Adelaide 11:30 AM ACDT · Thu, Jan 15 · UTC+10:30 · daylight saving, Eastern, no DST: Brisbane 11:00 AM AEST · Thu, Jan 15 · UTC+10:00 · no daylight saving, Eastern: Sydney, Canberra 12:00 PM AEDT · Thu, Jan 15 · UTC+11:00 · daylight saving, Eastern: Melbourne 12:00 PM AEDT · Thu, Jan 15 · UTC+11:00 · daylight saving, Eastern: Hobart 12:00 PM AEDT · Thu, Jan 15 · UTC+11:00 · daylight saving, Lord Howe Island 12:00 PM LHDT · Thu, Jan 15 · UTC+11:00 · daylight saving.Source: IANA Time Zone Database, tzdata 2026a (https://www.iana.org/time-zones)
- Time 12:00, In Eastern: Sydney, Canberra, Date 2026-07-15 gives Time zones 5, UTC offsets in use at that moment 5, Western: Perth 10:00 AM AWST · Wed, Jul 15 · UTC+08:00 · no daylight saving, Central Western: Eucla 10:45 AM ACWST · Wed, Jul 15 · UTC+08:45 · no daylight saving, Central, no DST: Darwin 11:30 AM ACST · Wed, Jul 15 · UTC+09:30 · no daylight saving, Central: Adelaide 11:30 AM ACST · Wed, Jul 15 · UTC+09:30 · standard time, Eastern, no DST: Brisbane 12:00 PM AEST · Wed, Jul 15 · UTC+10:00 · no daylight saving, Eastern: Sydney, Canberra 12:00 PM AEST · Wed, Jul 15 · UTC+10:00 · standard time, Eastern: Melbourne 12:00 PM AEST · Wed, Jul 15 · UTC+10:00 · standard time, Eastern: Hobart 12:00 PM AEST · Wed, Jul 15 · UTC+10:00 · standard time, Lord Howe Island 12:30 PM LHST · Wed, Jul 15 · UTC+10:30 · standard time.Source: IANA Time Zone Database, tzdata 2026a (https://www.iana.org/time-zones)
Other questions people ask
How many time zones does Australia have?
Three main ones: Australian Western (UTC+08:00), Central (UTC+09:30), and Eastern (UTC+10:00) Standard Time. Lord Howe Island keeps UTC+10:30, and the Eucla area on the Western Australia to South Australia border keeps an unofficial UTC+08:45, which makes the 5 standard offsets in the table.
Which states use daylight saving time?
New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, and the Australian Capital Territory move their clocks 1 hour forward from the first Sunday in October to the first Sunday in April. Queensland, the Northern Territory, and Western Australia do not. Lord Howe Island moves its clocks by 30 minutes.
How far apart are Sydney and Perth?
2 hours from April to October and 3 hours while Sydney is on daylight saving time. As of Wednesday, September 30, 2026, Sydney is 2 hours ahead of Perth.