How to Convert a Time Between Any Two Cities

“What’s 3 PM UK time in Dubai?” “When is 9 AM New York in London?” The same three steps answer all of them. Here’s the method — plus the one thing that trips people up.

The three-step method

  1. Find each city’s current UTC offset. London in summer is UTC+1, Dubai is UTC+4, New York is UTC−4 in summer. Offsets can change with daylight saving, so always use the current one, not a value you memorised last winter.
  2. Take the difference. Subtract the source offset from the destination offset. Dubai (UTC+4) − London (UTC+1) = +3 hours. That means Dubai is 3 hours ahead.
  3. Add the difference to your time. 3 PM in London + 3 hours = 6 PM in Dubai. If the result goes past midnight, roll into the next day; if it goes below zero, roll back a day.

That’s it. The World Clock converter does all three steps live, but knowing the method means you can sanity-check any answer.

Worked examples

3 PM UK time in Dubai. Difference is +3, so 3 PM → 6 PM. See it live on London → Dubai.

9 AM New York in London. London (UTC+1) − New York (UTC−4) = +5 hours, so 9 AM New York → 2 PM London. See New York → London.

10 AM UK time in Tokyo. Tokyo (UTC+9) − London (UTC+1) = +8 hours, so 10 AM → 6 PM Tokyo. See London → Tokyo.

The mistake to avoid: daylight saving

The naive shortcut — “London and New York are always 5 hours apart” — is wrong for several weeks a year. The two cities change their clocks on different dates in spring and autumn, so for a short window the gap is 4 hours, not 5. During those weeks, a hand-calculated conversion will be an hour off — which is exactly how people miss calls.

The fix is to always convert from each city’s live offset rather than a remembered number. Every city-pair page recomputes the offset the moment it loads, so the difference shown is correct for right now, daylight saving included. If you want the background on why the gap moves, read why time differences change.

Finding a slot that works for both sides

Converting one time is easy; finding a time that suits everyone is the real job. The trick is to look for the overlap in working hours — the window where it’s between 9 AM and 5 PM in both cities at the same moment. On every city-pair page, the “best meeting times” strip marks exactly those hours, and the World Clock meeting planner lays out a colour-coded 24-hour grid for two or more cities so a good slot is obvious at a glance.

When two cities are far apart — say London and Sydney — the overlap can be tiny or fall early morning for one side. In that case, pick the least-bad hour deliberately rather than discovering the clash after you’ve sent the invite.

Popular conversions

London → New York London → Dubai London → Tokyo London → Sydney London → Los Angeles New York → London Dubai → London All world clocks →

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