IST Time Now

IST right now

IST is India Standard Time, five and a half hours ahead of UTC. A single time applies across the whole country, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from Gujarat to Arunachal Pradesh, and India does not observe daylight saving.

That fixed offset is helpful for India but makes the gap to other countries change. When the US and Europe move their clocks in spring and autumn, the difference to IST moves by an hour even though India stays still.

When this page was last built (Friday, November 6, 2026, 12:00 UTC) it was 5:30 PM on Friday in India Standard Time. The offset for IST is UTC+5:30. The live clock above takes over as soon as the page loads and shows the exact current time.

Where IST is used

IST is used throughout India, and the same offset appears in neighbouring Sri Lanka under another name.

• New Delhi
• Mumbai
• Bengaluru
• Hyderabad
• Chennai
• Kolkata
• Pune
• Ahmedabad
• Jaipur
• Lucknow
• Chandigarh
• Kochi
• Colombo

Sri Lanka uses UTC+5:30 as well, called Sri Lanka Standard Time. Nepal is 15 minutes ahead of India at UTC+5:45, one of the few places in the world with a quarter-hour offset.

Working with India Standard Time

India is home to a large share of the world’s IT services, back-office and customer support work, so IST is the clock of many remote teams. The US overlap is tight: India is 10 hours 30 minutes ahead of New York in winter and 9 hours 30 minutes in summer, so a US morning is an Indian evening. Typical working overlaps are the Indian evening and the American morning.

With Europe the overlap is easier. India is 5 hours 30 minutes ahead of London in winter and 4 hours 30 minutes in summer, so a 10 AM London meeting is 3:30 or 2:30 PM in India. With the UAE and Singapore the gaps are small: Dubai is 1 hour 30 minutes behind, Singapore 2 hours 30 minutes ahead.

India’s stock exchanges, NSE and BSE, trade from 9:15 AM to 3:30 PM IST, which is 3:45 to 10:00 AM UTC. A trader in New York sees the Indian market open at 10:45 PM the evening before in winter. Government deadlines, exam results and bank cut-off times in India are all in IST, even when they affect people abroad.

IST can mean Irish or Israel time

IST is also used for Irish Standard Time, UTC+1, the summer clock in Ireland, and Israel Standard Time, UTC+2. Irish time is 4 hours 30 minutes behind India, and Israeli time is 3 hours 30 minutes behind. A message from Dublin that says “5 PM IST” in July is 9:30 PM in Mumbai.

In India people write IST for everything, with no concept of a summer variant. Elsewhere, a time marked IST is more likely to be Indian than Irish, but a conference with attendees in both countries should add the city.

When emailing Indian colleagues, state the date as well as the time. The gap often brings dates apart: 9 AM in Delhi is 10:30 PM the previous day in New York.