Time zone converter with DST warnings, named teams, and holiday highlight
Plan meetings across time zones with named participants, per-person working hours, regional holidays, and DST shifts marked inline on the strip.
A time zone converter tells you when a distributed team can plausibly meet, without dragging someone in at midnight or while a coworker is on a public holiday. You add named people with their zone and working hours, and the overlap appears on a stacked strip. Daylight-saving transitions show up inline, so the March meeting does not land an hour off.
When can the team meet?
Up to eight named participants with their own working hours and per-region holidays. Daylight-saving transitions are marked inline on the strip.
UTCRuns in your browser. No login. Participant names only leave your browser when you actively copy the share link.
Why is there a 5-hour gap between Berlin and NYC in March?
The US shifts to daylight-saving time earlier than the EU. In 2026, New York jumps forward on March 8; Berlin not until March 29. For those three weeks the difference is five hours, not the usual six. In the fall the asymmetry flips, this time for a single week.
| Year | New York switches | Berlin switches | Gap window |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | Mar 8 (forward) | Mar 29 (forward) | three weeks at 5h, not 6h |
| 2026 | Nov 1 (back) | Oct 25 (back) | one week at 5h, not 6h |
| 2027 | Mar 14 (forward) | Mar 28 (forward) | two weeks at 5h, not 6h |
When the visible window crosses one of these gaps, a banner appears above the strip and spells out the effect with the two zones and the hour drift. The strip itself shows a DST seam at the transition hour, so you can see exactly where the clocks jump.
What's the difference between CET and Germany?
CET (Central European Time) is a fixed offset, UTC+1. Germany follows CET in winter, but switches to CEST (UTC+2) in summer. Using "CET" as shorthand for "German local time" means different wall-clock times depending on the season, because CET itself stays at UTC+1 year-round. The IANA zone database (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) sidesteps this by listing Europe/Berlin, America/New_York, Asia/Tokyo. Each entry carries its region's transition rules.
Three examples from the list:
Europe/Berlinfollows the EU rule: last Sunday in March forward, last Sunday in October back.America/New_Yorkfollows the US rule: second Sunday in March, first Sunday in November.Asia/Tokyohas no transitions at all. Always UTC+9.
In the anchor zone field you can search by city name ("Berlin", "Tokyo", "Madrid") and the matching IANA zone fills in. That avoids the footgun even established providers document: picking "CET" gives you a one-hour error in Germany during summer.
How do I plan a meeting between Berlin, New York, and Tokyo?
You add a row per person with a plain-text label, a zone, and a working-hours range. The strip stacks 24-hour bands and colors hours by status: green for working, gray for outside, yellow hatching for a holiday. A soft accent band marks the shared window. If nothing lines up, a different date or a stretched working-hours range usually opens one.
- Pick the anchor zone, usually yours. Pick a date or keep it on 'Today'.
- Add participants with a plain-text label like 'Anna NYC', the city-name zone suggest, and a per-person working-hours range. Night shifts from 14 to 4 work too.
- Read the strip. The accent band shows the shared window. Holiday rows are hatched, with a tooltip on the affected hours.
- Copy the async-handoff line or share the team link. The team only lands in the URL parameter once you click share, not on every keystroke.
Holidays are loaded for eleven regions (DE, AT, CH, US, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, PL, JP), curated for 2026 and 2027. Someone off for Good Friday or Independence Day is visibly out of the plan, so you do not need a calendar tab open next to the planner.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are some hours grayed out or hatched on the strip?
Hatched hours mark a public holiday in a participant's region, for example Good Friday for 'Berlin' or Independence Day for 'New York'. Holidays are curated for 2026 and 2027 across eleven regions: DE, AT, CH, US, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, PL, JP. If you set a participant's region to 'none', their row is never grayed.
How do I save a team without a login?
Click 'Share team link'. The participants (name, zone, working hours) get encoded into a URL parameter and the address lands in your clipboard. Anyone who opens it sees the same setup. No account, no cookies. The address is capped at about 4 KB, comfortable for the eight-participant maximum the tool allows.
Does it handle working hours that wrap past midnight?
Yes. Enter start after end, for instance 14 to 4, and the strip renders two green segments. One in the afternoon, one early the next day. Night shifts, late operations windows, and on-call rotations stay readable without splitting the day artificially at midnight.
Which library does the converter use for time zones?
None. Hour and zone logic uses the browser's own Intl.DateTimeFormat, which knows the IANA zone database (several hundred zones, depending on browser version). DST transitions are detected by comparing UTC offsets on consecutive days. No extra time zone library has to load.
For Unix timestamps or ISO-8601 conversion, the Timestamp converter handles the matching job next door.