AKST Time Now

AKST right now

AKST is Alaska Standard Time, nine hours behind UTC. It is the winter clock of Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau, which sit one hour behind the Pacific coast and four hours behind New York.

Alaska switches to Alaska Daylight Time (AKDT, UTC−8) on the same dates as the lower 48 states, so for most of the year the state is one hour behind Los Angeles. The exception is the western Aleutian Islands, which use Hawaii–Aleutian time, UTC−10 in winter.

When this page was last built (Friday, November 6, 2026, 12:00 UTC) it was 3:00 AM on Friday in Alaska Standard Time. The offset for AKST is UTC−9. The live clock above takes over as soon as the page loads and shows the exact current time.

Where AKST is used

AKST covers almost all of Alaska, the largest US state by area.

• Anchorage
• Fairbanks
• Juneau
• Sitka
• Ketchikan
• Kodiak
• Wasilla
• Bethel
• Nome
• Utqiaġvik (Barrow)

Most of Alaska is on a single time zone despite its enormous size. Until 1983 the state had four, and a 1983 reform merged them to a single zone, apart from the far west.

Planning around Alaska time

Alaska is often forgotten in national schedules. A “noon Eastern” broadcast is 8:00 AM in Anchorage in winter, and a federal deadline at 11:59 PM Eastern is 7:59 PM Alaska time. Anyone submitting a form from Fairbanks needs to take four hours off, not three.

Alaska has strong links to Asia. Anchorage is a cargo hub, and flights from Tokyo, Seoul and Hong Kong refuel or connect there. A 9 AM AKST call is 3 AM the next day in Tokyo, so scheduling across the Pacific works best in the Alaskan afternoon, which is the Japanese morning.

Daylight in Alaska is extreme. Anchorage has less than 6 hours of daylight around the winter solstice and more than 19 hours in June, so clock time says little about whether it is light outside. Teams across the state tend to follow a rigid wall-clock schedule regardless.

AKST, AKDT and AT

AKST is the standard (winter) abbreviation and AKDT the daylight (summer) one. There is no widely used generic form like “ET”, so people say “Alaska time”. A tool that offers only AKST for a July date is wrong by an hour.

AKST is also easy to mix up with AST, which is Atlantic Standard Time (UTC−4) in eastern Canada and the Caribbean. The two are five hours apart, and a sender who types AST for Anchorage creates a very large mistake.

If you are scheduling with an Alaskan, ask for the place instead of the abbreviation. “10 AM Anchorage time” is clear in all seasons.