🕙 London to Tokyo Time Converter

Tokyo is 8 hours ahead of London for most of the year: when it is 10:00 am in London it is 6:00 pm in Tokyo. In offset terms London is on UTC+00:00 and Tokyo is on UTC+09:00 in January, and UTC+01:00 and UTC+09:00 in July. The converter above works from your browser’s own time zone data, so the figure it shows is the one in force today rather than the one that was in force when this page was written.

The difference is not constant, because only one of the two cities observes daylight saving. In 2026, London changes on 29 March and 25 October and Tokyo does not change at all. That leaves 3 distinct periods in the year, and the table below gives the exact dates. It is the short windows that catch people out: a recurring call booked in one city’s clock silently moves in the other’s.

For arranging anything, the number that matters is the overlap. London works 09:00 to 17:30 and Tokyo works 09:00 to 18:00, which leaves 09:00 to 10:00 in London — 17:00 to 18:00 in Tokyo — as the window when both are open. That is 1 hour of shared working time. Both cities work Monday to Friday, so only the clock has to be reconciled.

Two local details worth knowing. The City works 09:00 to 17:30, and the 08:00 market open means email is answered well before the official start. Japan has not used daylight saving since 1951, so UTC+09:00 holds all year and the offset only moves when the other city switches.

The safest way to write a time for these two cities is to give both, as in "10:00 London / 18:00 Tokyo", or to give the UTC offset. Abbreviations are the trap: London is on GMT for part of the year and BST for the rest, and the same three letters are reused in other parts of the world for entirely different offsets.

The formula

local London

The time you enter, on the London clock

offset

Each city’s UTC offset at that moment, read live from the IANA time zone database in your browser

+8

The difference in hours that holds for most of 2026: Tokyo is 8 hours ahead of London

day shift

Whether the converted time falls on the previous, same or next calendar day in Tokyo

How it works, step by step

1. Enter a time in London using the 24-hour hour box and the minute box — 15:30 is hour 15, minute 30.
2. Your browser reports the UTC offset in force in London and in Tokyo for that moment, so a date near a daylight saving transition is handled correctly rather than with a fixed 8 hour rule.
3. The second offset minus the first gives the difference, which is added to the time you entered. A result past midnight is marked as the next or previous day, because that is where most conversion mistakes live.
4. The panel also shows the current time in both cities, the date in Tokyo, and whether the two offices are open at the same moment.

Worked examples

How to read your score

Frequently asked questions

London to Tokyo: every hour, every period of 2026, and meeting slots

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