Riyadh
UTC+3Saudi Arabia · AST
Sun, 9 Aug 2026
Timezone Guide
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia runs on UTC+3. This time zone stays fixed year-round at UTC+3 — daylight saving time is not observed. There is a 7-hour difference between Riyadh and New York. Standard 9-to-6 working hours overlap for about 2 hours a day with New York. A good time to connect: 16:00–18:00 in Riyadh lines up with 09:00–11:00 in New York. There is a 2-hour difference between Riyadh and London. Standard 9-to-6 working hours overlap for about 7 hours a day with London. A good time to connect: 11:00–18:00 in Riyadh lines up with 09:00–16:00 in London. There is a 6-hour difference between Riyadh and Tokyo. Standard 9-to-6 working hours overlap for about 3 hours a day with Tokyo. A good time to connect: 09:00–12:00 in Riyadh lines up with 15:00–18:00 in Tokyo. This timezone is also shared with cities such as Moscow, Athens, Istanbul. Keeping these offsets in mind makes it easier to schedule calls or travel to and from Riyadh.
Practical Info
Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) is home to roughly 7.7M people. Today brings about 13.8 hours of daylight: sunrise at 05:30, sunset at 19:18. This time zone stays fixed year-round at UTC+3 — daylight saving time is not observed. It sits in the Northern Hemisphere, about 25° north of the equator. Traffic drives on the right.
Flag
Saudi Arabia
Capital
Riyadh 👑
Continent
Asia
Time Zone
AST · Asia/Riyadh
Coordinates
24.69°N, 46.72°E
Currency
SAR (﷼)
Calling Code
+966
Driving Side
Right
Hemisphere
Northern
Language
Arabic
Measurement System
Metric
Did You Know?
Saudi Arabia Cut Everyone's Pay by Eleven Days Without Changing a Single Salary
Since 1932, Saudi Arabia had paid its public sector employees according to the Hijri calendar — the Islamic lunar year.
A Hijri year runs twelve lunar months of 29 or 30 days, determined by the sighting of the crescent moon, and comes to roughly 354 days. That is about eleven days shorter than a Gregorian year.
Salaries were annual. So for eighty-four years, a Saudi civil servant was paid a full year's salary every 354 days — which meant, measured against the sun, they were being paid for eleven days they did not work.
On 1 October 2016, as part of a broad austerity package, the Council of Ministers moved public sector pay onto the Gregorian calendar.
Nobody's salary figure changed. Not one number on any payslip was reduced. But the year those salaries were paid over got eleven days longer — so every public employee in the kingdom quietly took an eleven-day pay cut, delivered entirely through the calendar.
The same package cut ministers' salaries by 20%, reduced their annual leave from 42 days to 36, and cancelled bonuses.
The clock: the Hijri calendar is still very much alive in Saudi Arabia for religious and much civil use, and its lunar basis produces something the solar world never experiences.
Because it loses about eleven days a year against the sun, Islamic dates walk steadily backwards through the seasons. Ramadan drifts through spring, then winter, then autumn, then summer, and returns to where it started after roughly 33 years.
Which means a Muslim who fasts through a lifetime will experience Ramadan in every season there is — the short, mild fasting days of a Riyadh winter and the punishing ones of a Riyadh July — and will only ever see the full cycle come round once.
Riyadh runs two calendars at once. One is anchored to the moon and moves. One is anchored to the sun and does not. The country has spent a century deciding, case by case, which of them each part of life belongs to.
Sources
- Arab News, *KSA switches to Gregorian calendar* (1 Ekim 2016 Bakanlar Kurulu kararı)
- Gulf News, *Public sector loses 11 days of salary after calendar switch* (11 günlük kayıp; bakan maaşlarında %20 kesinti; izinlerin 42'den 36 güne inmesi)
- PRX/The World (memurların aynı maaşa 11 gün fazla çalışması)
- Middle East Monitor (Hicri yılın 354 günü)
- Inside Saudi (1932'den beri Hicri ödeme; 33 yıllık mevsim döngüsü)
Annual Daylight
Working Hours
6h overlap