Europe · Northern Europe · Sovereign state
Current time in Iceland
A single time zone at null.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
About Iceland's time
A single time zone.
Iceland keeps things simple with a single timezone (GMT/UTC+0) and no Daylight Saving Time. Iceland lies far west of the Greenwich meridian (Reykjavik is at about 22°W), so solar noon in Reykjavik comes after 1 PM on the clock.
Major cities
Cities of Iceland.
History
How Iceland keeps time.
Iceland introduced standard time in 1908, replacing Reykjavik local mean time (about UTC−1:28) with UTC−1.
From 1917 Iceland moved its clocks forward to UTC+0 for summer in many years. In April 1968 it kept summer time permanently, so UTC+0 became its year-round time and clock changes stopped. The northern latitude already meant wildly variable day lengths—almost continuous daylight in summer and very short days in winter—so shifting clocks barely changed when people actually saw sunlight. Since then the country has stayed on GMT permanently.
Did you know?
Things about Iceland's time.
Despite using UTC+0, Iceland lies almost entirely west of the prime meridian, squarely in what should be UTC−1 or even UTC−2 territory by longitude. Reykjavik sits around 21°W, yet officially matches London time. The result is striking: solar noon in Reykjavik can occur close to 1:30 PM clock time, and the sun takes its time both rising and setting compared with European cities at similar latitudes.
That mismatch gives Icelandic winters an extra‑late dawn while summers stretch into near‑midnight sunsets—a feature that many visitors find disorienting but locals treat as perfectly normal.
Convert
Iceland to the world's clocks.
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about Iceland's time zone, daylight saving rules, and how to handle it in software. Can't find what you need? Email [email protected].
- What timezone is Iceland in all year?
- Iceland uses Greenwich Mean Time (GMT, UTC+0) throughout the year and does not change its clocks for Daylight Saving Time.
- Does Iceland share its timezone with London?
- In practice, yes—Iceland and London both show UTC+0 all year. However, being much farther west, Iceland’s actual sun position is closer to what you’d see in UTC−1.
- Why does the sun feel out of sync with the clock?
- Iceland’s longitude puts it in a zone that’s one to two hours behind its official time. This makes the sun appear to “lag”: it rises and sets later by the clock than you might expect for a GMT location.
- Does Iceland have more than one timezone?
- No. The entire country and its outlying islands use the same single zone, Greenwich Mean Time (UTC+0).
- When is sunrise and sunset like in Reykjavik during winter?
- In midwinter the sun may not crest the horizon until around 11:00 local time, and it sets again near 15:30–16:00, giving only a few hours of daylight—even though the clock shows times associated with more southerly, “normal‑looking” days.
- Is video‑calling from Iceland to Europe easy to schedule?
- Iceland stays on UTC+0 all year. It matches the UK and Ireland in winter and is one hour behind them in summer; it is one hour behind Central European Time in winter and two hours behind in summer.
- Is it ever dark all day or light all night?
- Iceland doesn’t reach full polar day or polar night, but it comes close. Around the winter solstice there are only about 4–5 hours of daylight, while in late June the sun barely dips below the horizon for several weeks.
Source: IANA tzdb2026d · Reviewed
Free · Developer API
This country, as JSON.
Its default time zone, zone and city counts and DST summary, from one endpoint.
Also in the API: time zones by coordinates, conversions that flag daylight saving gaps, and abbreviations decoded.
Moving off WorldTimeAPI? Our drop-in replacement needs no key.