Europe · Eastern Europe · Sovereign state
Current time in Russia
Spans 19 time zones from UTC+02:00 to UTC+11:00, a 9-hour difference.
Thursday, October 15, 2026
About Russia's time
19 time zones.
Russia spans 11 time zones, from UTC+2 in Kaliningrad to UTC+12 in Kamchatka and Chukotka, and none of them observes daylight saving time.
By time zone
Time zones of Russia.
19 time zones
Major cities
Cities of Russia.
History
How Russia keeps time.
Russia’s timekeeping history is a tale of political upheaval and bureaucratic whim. Before the 1917 Revolution, the empire used a patchwork of local times based on longitude; but in 1919 the Soviet government introduced a system of hourly time zones based on Greenwich.
In 1930, the entire USSR moved its clocks one hour forward permanently, creating ‘decree time.’ Seasonal summer time was added on top from 1981 until 2011, when President Medvedev put the country on permanent summer time. That experiment was reversed in 2014 after public complaints about dark mornings; since then Russia has used permanent standard time across all its zones.
After annexing Crimea in 2014, Russia moved the peninsula from UTC+2 to Moscow time (then UTC+4) on March 30, 2014. Regional changes continued in 2016, when Astrakhan, Saratov, Ulyanovsk, Tomsk, Barnaul, Magadan and Sakhalin moved their clocks one hour forward.
Did you know?
Things about Russia's time.
Spanning from Kaliningrad at UTC+2 to Kamchatka at UTC+12, Russia’s 11 time zones follow its roughly 170° span of longitude.
Russia last changed clocks seasonally in 2011. It then stayed on permanent summer time until October 2014, when most of the country moved back one hour to permanent standard time after complaints about dark winter mornings. As a result, Moscow's sunrise in June comes before 4 a.m.
Crimea's clocks jumped two hours overnight in March 2014, from UTC+2 to Moscow time, then UTC+4.
Convert
Russia to the world's clocks.
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about Russia's time zone, daylight saving rules, and how to handle it in software. Can't find what you need? Email [email protected].
- Why does Russia have so many time zones?
- Russia stretches across Eurasia—nearly 10,000 km east to west—so it needs multiple zones to keep solar noon roughly aligned with clock time.
- Does Russia observe daylight saving time?
- No. Russia has not changed its clocks seasonally since 2011. From 2011 to 2014 it stayed on permanent summer time; since October 2014 it has used permanent standard time, after public backlash over dark winter mornings.
- What is Moscow Standard Time (MSK)?
- MSK is UTC+3 and serves as Russia’s default reference time. Other Russian zones are commonly described relative to it, for example MSK+7 for Vladivostok.
- Are all Russian time zones actively used?
- Yes. All 11 are in everyday use, though the easternmost ones, such as UTC+12 in Kamchatka and Chukotka (Anadyr), cover sparsely populated regions.
- How did Crimea’s time change after 2014?
- Immediately after annexation, Crimea switched from UTC+2 (Kyiv time) to UTC+4 (then Moscow time), skipping any transition period—a rare case of geopolitical time enforcement.
- Is there any place in Russia with unusual offsets like UTC+12?
- Yes—Kamchatka and Chukotka both use UTC+12, Russia's easternmost offset, 9 hours ahead of Moscow.
Source: IANA tzdb2026d · Reviewed
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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.
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