| Time zone | Eastern Time (EST/EDT) |
| UTC offset (today) | UTC-04:00 |
| Daylight saving | Toronto moves to EDT (UTC-4) on the second Sunday of March and back to EST (UTC-5) on the first Sunday of November. |
| Business hours | Offices generally open 9:00 to 17:00, and the big bank branches keep roughly 9:30 to 16:00 or 17:00 on weekdays with some Saturday hours. Most shops trade seven days, but Ontario holidays such as Family Day in February close many businesses. |
| Country | Canada |
Toronto keeps the same time as New York, Montreal and Ottawa all year, so anything scheduled in ET applies across the whole corridor. Inside Canada the spread is wide: Vancouver is three hours behind, Halifax one hour ahead, and St. John's in Newfoundland 1h30 ahead, the only half-hour offset in North America.
Ontario has debated staying on summer time permanently, and a provincial law exists for that change, but it only takes effect if Quebec and New York State move together. As of October 2026 that has not happened, so Toronto still changes clocks twice a year.
Toronto has a large South Asian community, and the most common question is when to call home. Delhi is 9h30 ahead during EDT and 10h30 ahead during EST. A 21:00 call in Toronto lands at 6:30 or 7:30 the next morning in India, while a 7:30 call from Toronto reaches India in the early evening.
London is five hours ahead for most of the year, but in late October the UK changes a week earlier than Canada, so for about a week the gap is only four hours. The same short mismatch happens in March.
Yes. Both use Eastern Time and change clocks on the same dates, so they never differ.
Clocks fall back one hour on Sunday 1 November 2026, from EDT to EST.
Most of Ontario is, but the far northwest, including Kenora, uses Central Time, one hour behind Toronto.
· Written by Om Vaghani, ClockAura