Time in Antarctica

Updated 28 September 2026

Antarctica has no time zone of its own. Each research station keeps whatever time suits its work, usually the time of the country or port that supplies it, so at New Year the stations' clocks span sixteen hours, from UTC−3 to UTC+13.

A clock is a choice

Time zones follow longitude, and at the South Pole every line of longitude meets, so there is no natural local time to follow. In summer the Sun does not set at all, as the midnight sun article explains, so daylight is no guide either. The time zone database, the reference behind the zone list on this board, therefore records only what each station actually does, and lists only places that are occupied all year.

The South Pole keeps New Zealand time

The Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, occupied without a break since November 1956, keeps New Zealand time, like McMurdo Station and New Zealand's Scott Base on Ross Island. The database records the reason in a note citing Paul Siple, the station's first commander: he would have liked to keep Greenwich time, but found New Zealand time more convenient because the station's supplies came through McMurdo Sound. So Antarctica/McMurdo and Antarctica/South_Pole are both links to Pacific/Auckland, and at New Year, in the southern summer, they run at UTC+13, among the first clocks on Earth to reach midnight.

Station by station

These are the eleven Antarctica/ zones in Chrome's zone list, with the offset each keeps at New Year under the current time zone database.

Borrowed zones

Several stations simply share another place's clock. Chile's bases and the town of Villa Las Estrellas use the time of Punta Arenas, UTC−3. The French–Italian Concordia Station has kept the same time as Singapore since it opened. Antarctica/Syowa is a link to Asia/Riyadh, which keeps the same UTC+3, and Antarctica/DumontDUrville is a link to Pacific/Port_Moresby at UTC+10.

Clocks that change by decision

Some stations change time more often than most countries. Australia's Casey Station switched between UTC+8 and UTC+11 sixteen times from October 2009 to March 2023, sometimes for a single summer, and has kept UTC+8 since. Russia's Vostok Station had kept UTC+7 for at least ten years when Zakhary Akulov decided to move it to UTC+5 from 18 December 2023; he wrote that the base works constantly with Progress station, sledge convoys and aircraft, which all use UTC+5. Norway's Troll Station is modelled with two settings, UTC+2 from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October and UTC the rest of the year, a simplification the database made in 2014 of a reported pattern that also has weeks at UTC+1.

On this board

Pick Antarctica/McMurdo to count down with the South Pole, about 13 hours before New Year in London. Pick Antarctica/Troll to see the year end at the same moment as in London, and Antarctica/Rothera to see it three hours later.

Sources

• tz database, file antarctica — IANA, release 2026d (year-round locations only; South Pole and Siple's choice; Chile, Concordia, Japan and Dumont d'Urville entries; Casey, Davis, Mawson, Vostok, Troll and Rothera histories)
• tz database, file backward — IANA, release 2026d (McMurdo, South_Pole, Syowa and DumontDUrville as links)
• tz database, file australasia and southamerica — IANA, release 2026d (Macquarie on Tasmanian time; Palmer at UTC−3 since 2016)
• Stations — National Institute of Polar Research, Japan (Syowa Station, Japan's main station, opened January 1957)
• Offsets at New Year computed from those files and checked against Node.js 25.8.2 (tz 2026a); zone list read through the JavaScript Intl API in Chrome 153, 28 September 2026