Apia, Samoa · UTC+13
Convert time from Apia
Apia is in the Pacific/Apia timezone (WST/UTC+13, DST to UTC+14 in summer). Samoa’s capital famously skipped a calendar day in 2011, and has a population of around 40,000.
On December 29, 2011, Samoa went to sleep and woke up on December 31. December 30 simply did not exist in Samoa. The country crossed the International Date Line, moving from UTC-11 to UTC+13, skipping a full calendar day, so that its business hours would align with Australia and New Zealand instead of the United States.
The logic was economic. Samoa’s major trading partners are Australia and New Zealand. When Samoan workers arrived at their offices on Monday morning, their Australian and New Zealand contacts were already finishing their Tuesday. The four-day business week of overlap was costing the economy real money. By crossing the date line, Samoa moved from being one of the last countries to greet each day to one of the first.
The clock now runs UTC+13, or UTC+14 during daylight saving. The IANA identifier is Pacific/Apia.
Avarua in the Cook Islands, about 1,100 kilometers to the northeast, sits on the other side of that same date line, running on UTC-10. Two small Pacific capitals, geographically close, separated by a full day on the calendar.
American Samoa left behind
The move had one complication: American Samoa, a separate US territory to the east of Samoa, did not follow. The two territories, once in the same timezone, are now 25 hours apart, one of the widest timezone gaps between any two neighboring lands.
9am in Apia is 10pm the previous night in London during European winter.
Sources
Read more about time in Samoa →Same time as Apia
Compare Apia with
Questions about time in Apia
- What timezone is Apia in?
- Apia uses the IANA timezone
Pacific/Apia. The UTC offset is always UTC+13 - this timezone does not observe daylight saving time. - Does Apia observe daylight saving time?
- No. Apia does not observe daylight saving time. The UTC offset remains UTC+13 all year round.
- What is the current UTC offset for Apia?
- Apia is currently at UTC+13.
- What is the time difference between Apia and New York?
- Apia is currently 17 hours ahead of New York.
- What is the time difference between Apia and London?
- Apia is currently 12 hours ahead of London.
- What is the time difference between Apia and Los Angeles?
- Apia is currently 20 hours ahead of Los Angeles.
- What is the time difference between Apia and Tokyo?
- Apia is currently 4 hours ahead of Tokyo.
- What is the IANA timezone name for Apia?
- The IANA timezone database identifier for Apia is
Pacific/Apia. Use this string in programming languages and APIs: JavaScript (`new Intl.DateTimeFormat('en-US', { timeZone: 'Pacific/Apia' })`), Python (`pytz.timezone('Pacific/Apia')`), or any IANA-compatible library.