Time in India, live, to the second.

The time in India is India Standard Time, written IST, which is UTC+5:30. The whole country keeps this one clock all year, and India does not use daylight saving time, so the clock never moves forward or back. The big clock above shows India time to the second from your device's clock, and the cards show the offset and how far India is from where you are right now.

How to use this India time page

1. Read the big clock: hours, minutes and seconds in India, then the date, the name of the zone and its UTC offset.
2. The cards under it show the time zone, the UTC offset, whether the place changes its clocks and when next, and the difference from your own time zone. If the page has guessed your zone wrong, pick the right one under Your place.
3. To plan a call, set a Date and a Time under What time is it there when it is. The line under the boxes gives the time in India, with the day. Use now sets your own current time.
4. The row of eight times below shows common hours of your day, every three hours, next to the matching time there.
5. On the right, tick 24-hour clock or switch Show seconds off. Copy the time copies one line you can paste into a message. Your choices stay in this browser.

What the clock is based on

The National Physical Laboratory of India maintains IST and gives it as UTC plus 5:30 hours. India's zone in the IANA time zone database is called Asia/Kolkata, and it is the only zone the database lists for India, so Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru all show the same time. The same database has no daylight saving rule in use for India. The page reads these rules from your browser, so it does not carry a table of its own.

Why India's offset has a half hour

Most time zones differ from UTC by whole hours. India's is 5 hours 30 minutes, so when a place on the hour is ahead of India by a whole number of hours, India's clock shows a half hour. For example, when it is 9:00 AM in Dubai, which is UTC+4, it is 10:30 AM in India. A table or a script that only adds whole hours will be wrong by 30 minutes.

India compared with other places

India stays at UTC+5:30. The other side changes, so the gap changes with it. This table shows how far India is ahead of each place in the middle of January and the middle of July 2026:

New York, Los Angeles and London move their clocks one hour forward in spring and one hour back in autumn, so their gap changes. Dubai and Singapore do not change, so their gap with India is the same all year. Sydney is in the southern hemisphere, so its clock moves the other way, forward in October and back in April, and the gap changes at the opposite times.

Calling India: a worked example

Suppose it is 9:00 AM on Tuesday 20 October 2026 where you are. IST is 5 hours 30 minutes ahead of UTC, so the arithmetic is: take your local time, convert it to UTC with your own offset, then add 5:30.

On that date New York is on EDT (UTC-4), Los Angeles on PDT (UTC-7) and London on BST (UTC+1). Type your own date and time in the box above to get the exact answer for any day.

When your clocks change

Because India never changes, the call times you set in India stay the same all year, and the other side moves. A call fixed at 6:30 PM IST is 9:00 AM in New York in summer and 8:00 AM in winter. If you work with India across a clock change, check the first call after it. The converter pages for pairs, such as IST to EST, list the dates for this year and next.

IST can also mean other things

The letters IST are used for India Standard Time, Irish Standard Time and Israel Standard Time. This page is India only. If an invite says IST and the people are in Dublin or Jerusalem, convert with the time zone converter.

Sources, checked 18 Oct 2026. The IST offset is from the National Physical Laboratory of India. Zones and daylight saving rules are from the IANA time zone database (version 2026e), the data your browser uses; India's zone list is its zone.tab file.