UTC offset

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "UTC offset" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (December 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

It has been suggested that this article be merged into Coordinated Universal Time. (Discuss) Proposed since December 2024.

The UTC offset is the difference in hours and minutes between Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and the standard time at a particular place.^[1] This difference is expressed with respect to UTC and is generally shown in the format ±[hh]:[mm], ±[hh][mm], or ±[hh]. So if the time being described is two hours ahead of UTC (such as in Kigali, Rwanda [approximately 30° E]), the UTC offset would be "+02:00", "+0200", or simply "+02".

By convention, every inhabited place in the world has a UTC offset that is a multiple of 15 minutes but the majority of offsets are stated in whole hours. There are many cases where the national standard time uses a UTC offset that is not defined solely by longitude.^[a]

Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).