🕐 Shanghai to Los Angeles Time Converter

Los Angeles is 15 hours behind Shanghai for most of the year: when it is 10:00 am in Shanghai it is 7:00 pm (previous day) in Los Angeles. In offset terms Shanghai is on UTC+08:00 and Los Angeles is on UTC-08:00 in January, and UTC+08:00 and UTC-07:00 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, Shanghai does not change at all and Los Angeles changes on 8 March and 1 November. 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.

There is no overlap in office hours at all. Shanghai works 09:00 to 18:00 and Los Angeles works 09:00 to 18:00, and with 15 hours between them one city has closed before the other opens. Anything live has to be early for one side or late for the other; 18:00 to 19:00 in Shanghai, which is 03:00 to 04:00 in Los Angeles, is usually the least painful compromise. Both cities work Monday to Friday, so only the clock has to be reconciled.

Two local details worth knowing. China uses one zone, UTC+08:00, from Kashgar to Shanghai, and a long midday break is still normal outside the largest firms. The working day starts late and runs late, so a 09:00 Pacific call is already lunchtime on the US east coast.

The safest way to write a time for these two cities is to give both, as in "10:00 Shanghai / 19:00 Los Angeles", or to give the UTC offset. Abbreviations are the trap: Shanghai is on CST for part of the year and CST for the rest, and the same three letters are reused in other parts of the world for entirely different offsets.

The formula

local Shanghai

The time you enter, on the Shanghai clock

offset

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

−15

The difference in hours that holds for most of 2026: Los Angeles is 15 hours behind Shanghai

day shift

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

How it works, step by step

1. Enter a time in Shanghai 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 Shanghai and in Los Angeles for that moment, so a date near a daylight saving transition is handled correctly rather than with a fixed 15 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 Los Angeles, and whether the two offices are open at the same moment.

Worked examples

How to read your score

Frequently asked questions

Shanghai to Los Angeles: every hour, every period of 2026, and meeting slots

Related calculators