Free tool
A live equirectangular world map colored by current UTC offset. Click any mapped region to inspect its IANA time zone, local clock, and curated city matches.
UTC offsets are the difference between a local civil clock and Coordinated Universal Time. A place labeled UTC+02:00 is two hours ahead of UTC at this instant, while UTC-05:00 is five hours behind. The map above uses the current IANA time zone rules, so countries affected by daylight saving time can change color when their seasonal offset changes. That makes it more useful than a static time zone poster: London, New York, or Sydney may not keep the same relationship all year.
The polygons are deliberately simplified so the tool stays fast and readable on small screens. Each region is assigned one representative IANA zone, which is enough for a quick offset overview but not a substitute for city-level scheduling in countries with multiple zones. The side panel lists curated cities that match the selected zone exactly, helping you move from a visual map to a practical meeting or publishing decision.
Use the cooler blue regions to spot time zones west of UTC and the warmer orange regions to spot zones east of UTC. Gray marks UTC itself. For exact conversions across multiple cities, use the time zone converter after you identify the regions you care about.
The most common is assuming offsets follow lines of longitude. Civil time follows political boundaries: China spans the geographic width of several offset bands yet keeps one national clock, Asia/Shanghai, so the whole country renders in a single color. The reverse trap is assuming one country means one offset. Since each region carries one representative zone, the United States is drawn with America/New_York and Russia with Europe/Moscow, even though both stretch across many zones internally.
A third mistake is treating every offset as a whole hour. Two mapped regions break that rule: India runs on UTC+05:30 through Asia/Kolkata and Iran on UTC+03:30 through Asia/Tehran. The color bands group them with their nearest neighbours, but the side panel always reports the exact offset of whatever zone you select.
Rather than a unique shade per offset, the map groups zones into nine bands: four blues for regions behind UTC, stepping in roughly three-hour groups, gray for UTC itself, and four oranges for regions ahead. Banding keeps neighbouring offsets visually related, so one glance tells you whether a region is a full working day away or only an hour or two adrift. Clicking a region replaces the approximation with exact numbers: the active IANA zone, its current offset label, and the local clock.
Anchor yourself at 12:00 UTC and walk the bands. New York reads 07:00 in winter and 08:00 during its daylight saving season. London reads 12:00 or 13:00 depending on the time of year. Kolkata always reads 17:30. Tokyo always reads 21:00, since Japan has not changed its clocks since 1951. Auckland reads 00:00 or 01:00 on the next calendar day. Do that walk once and the east-west gradient becomes intuitive: color intensity is distance from UTC, and the warm side of the map is already living in your tomorrow.
For reading a clock they are the same. UTC is the modern standard maintained with atomic clocks, while GMT is the older term rooted in solar observations at Greenwich. The United Kingdom uses GMT as its winter time and moves to UTC+1 in summer.
Civil offsets run from UTC-12:00 to UTC+14:00. The +14 offset, used in parts of Kiribati, lets those islands share a calendar date with trading partners west of the date line even though they sit east of 180 degrees longitude.
Each mapped region carries one representative IANA zone. Countries that span several zones, such as the United States, Russia, Brazil, and Australia, are drawn with a single well-known zone, so cities outside that zone will differ by whole hours. Use a city-level converter for exact scheduling.
Yes. Colors are computed from the current IANA rules at the moment the page loads, so a zone inside its DST season is drawn with its seasonal offset rather than its standard one.
Some jurisdictions chose fractional offsets to keep clocks closer to local solar time. On this map India at UTC+05:30 and Iran at UTC+03:30 are the fractional examples; Nepal at UTC+05:45 is the best-known quarter-hour case worldwide.