Time zones
Australia is on five time zones today
Counting each state and territory's capital, read at noon today. Broken Hill, in New South Wales, keeps South Australian time.
State by state
| State | Zone | UTC offset | Next change |
|---|---|---|---|
| NSW | AEDT | UTC+11 | Clocks go back on Sun 4 Apr 2027 |
| VIC | AEDT | UTC+11 | Clocks go back on Sun 4 Apr 2027 |
| QLD | AEST | UTC+10 | No daylight saving |
| WA | AWST | UTC+8 | No daylight saving |
| SA | ACDT | UTC+10:30 | Clocks go back on Sun 4 Apr 2027 |
| TAS | AEDT | UTC+11 | Clocks go back on Sun 4 Apr 2027 |
| ACT | AEDT | UTC+11 | Clocks go back on Sun 4 Apr 2027 |
| NT | ACST | UTC+9:30 | No daylight saving |
AEST or AEDT?
AEST, Australian Eastern Standard Time, is always UTC+10. AEDT, the daylight-saving version, is always UTC+11. Queensland stays on AEST all year; New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT use AEST in the cooler months and AEDT in the warmer ones.
So a time "in AEST" given for January is often meant as Sydney time — and Sydney's clocks are on AEDT then, an hour ahead of true AEST. When a time matters, ask for the city rather than the letters. The east coast is on daylight saving now: clocks next go back on Sunday 4 April 2027, and forward again on Sunday 3 October 2027.
The centre works the same way half an hour behind — ACST, UTC+9:30, all year in the Northern Territory, and ACDT, UTC+10:30, in South Australia's summer — and Western Australia keeps AWST, UTC+8, with no daylight saving at all.
Converters
- EST to AEST — New York time in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, and the four gaps it runs through in a year
- UTC to AEST — UTC in every Australian zone, including the months the east coast is on AEDT
- AEST to Perth — East-coast time in Perth, Adelaide, Darwin and Brisbane, which drift apart when Sydney changes its clocks
When each state's clocks change, and the law behind it, is on the daylight saving page. Offsets and change dates come from the IANA time zone database built into your browser and our build, never a typed-in table — which is how daylight-saving dates usually go stale. For dates rather than times, the date calculator counts days, weeks and months from today on Australian time.