IANA Name: US/Central
Standard Offset: UTC −06:00
Daylight Saving: Yes
DST Offset: UTC −05:00
DST Abbreviation: CDT
Currently Observing DST: Yes ✅
FAQ — US/Central
Common questions about this page — answers customized for the data shown above.
The current local time in US/Central is 01:59:18. US/Central is currently UTC-06:00. Compare with all major time zones.
US/Central is an IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) time zone identifier. IANA names use a Region/City format (e.g. Europe/London, America/New_York) and are the global standard used by Unix, Linux, macOS, Java, Python, and most modern software. Browse the full list of IANA time zones.
Yes — US/Central observes DST. In standard time it is CST UTC-06:00; during DST it switches to CDT UTC-05:00. Exact transition dates follow the local government's DST rules and are baked into the IANA tz database.
US/Central is used (in whole or in part) by United States. See the time zone map for a geographic view of all zones.
Use the time zone converter to translate between US/Central and any other zone. The converter handles DST transitions automatically and accepts either IANA names or city names as inputs.