| Time zone | Australian Eastern Time (AEST/AEDT) |
| UTC offset (today) | UTC+11:00 |
| Daylight saving | Sydney moves to AEDT (UTC+11) on the first Sunday of October and returns to AEST (UTC+10) on the first Sunday of April. |
| Business hours | Offices usually work 9:00 to 17:00 Monday to Friday, banks around 9:30 to 16:00, and most shops open seven days with longer hours on Thursday nights. The weekend is Saturday and Sunday. |
| Country | Australia |
Because Sydney is in the southern hemisphere, its summer time runs from October to April, the opposite of Europe and North America. That means the gap to London swings between 9 and 11 hours across the year, with brief odd weeks when only one side has changed.
Not all of eastern Australia follows Sydney. Brisbane in Queensland never uses daylight saving, so from October to April Brisbane is an hour behind Sydney despite sharing a standard zone. Melbourne, Canberra and Hobart match Sydney, while Adelaide sits 30 minutes behind it.
Sydney is 5h30 ahead of India during AEDT and 4h30 ahead during AEST. A 15:00 meeting in Sydney falls at 9:30 or 10:30 in Delhi, which makes the Sydney afternoon the usual slot for joint teams.
For the US East Coast, there is almost no shared office time: Sydney's early morning matches the New York afternoon of the previous day. Many teams settle on 8:00 in Sydney, which is 16:00 or 17:00 the day before in New York. Sunrise in December comes before 5:45, while June sunset is close to 16:55.
Sydney went back to AEST on 5 April 2026 and moved forward to AEDT on 4 October 2026. The next change back is 4 April 2027.
Only from April to October. During the Sydney summer, Brisbane is one hour behind because Queensland has no daylight saving.
Nearly. Sydney is 14 to 16 hours ahead of New York, so Monday morning in Sydney is still Sunday afternoon or evening in New York.
· Written by Om Vaghani, ClockAura