Eastern Time Zone

This article is about the time zone in the Americas. For the time zone in Australia, see Australian Eastern Time.
"New York Time" redirects here. For the newspaper, see The New York Times.

Eastern Time Zone
Time zone
  Eastern Time Zone
UTC offset
ESTUTC−05:00
EDTUTC−04:00
Current time
05:50, 19 March 2026 EST [refresh]
06:50, 19 March 2026 EDT [refresh]
Observance of DST
DST is observed in parts of this time zone.

The Eastern Time Zone (ET) is a time zone encompassing part or all of 23 states in the eastern United States, parts of eastern Canada, some Caribbean islands and the state of Quintana Roo in Mexico. Most areas in the time zone observe daylight saving time and thus alternate between:

  • Eastern Standard Time (EST), which is five hours behind Coordinated Universal Time (UTC−05:00) and observed during late autumn/winter, and
  • Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), which is four hours behind Coordinated Universal Time (UTC−04:00) and observed during spring/summer/early autumn.

Areas in the Eastern Time Zone which do not observe daylight saving time use Eastern Standard Time, which is based on the 75th meridian west of Greenwich. Observation of daylight saving time starts on the second Sunday in March; at 2:00 a.m. EST, clocks are advanced to 3:00 a.m. EDT, creating a 23-hour day. On the first Sunday in November, at 2:00 a.m. EDT, clocks are moved back to 1:00 a.m. EST, which results in a 25-hour day.

The time in this zone is based on the mean solar time of the 75th meridian west of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.

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