Time in Cape Town
South Africa · Africa/Johannesburg · latitude -33.92°
Reading your clock…
Cape Town never changes its clocks
Cape Town stays on UTC+02:00 all year round. This is worth being careful about rather than relaxed about: the gap between Cape Town and a city that does observe daylight saving still moves twice a year, because the other end moved. A recurring call can drift by an hour without anything changing here at all.
Same clock, different sky: Johannesburg share Africa/Johannesburg. Sunrise and sunset differ between them because latitude does, even though the clock does not.
Time difference from Cape Town
Where a range is shown, the gap genuinely changes during the year. That is not rounding or hedging — it is two governments moving their clocks on different weekends.
| City | Difference now | Across the year |
|---|---|---|
| London | 1 hour behind | −2h / −1h |
| New York | 6 hours behind | −7h / −6h |
| Los Angeles | 9 hours behind | −10h / −9h |
| Chicago | 7 hours behind | −8h / −7h |
| Toronto | 6 hours behind | −7h / −6h |
| Paris | the same time | −1h / 0 |
| Berlin | the same time | −1h / 0 |
| Dubai | 2 hours ahead | constant |
| Mumbai | 3 hours 30 minutes ahead | constant |
| Singapore | 6 hours ahead | constant |
| Hong Kong | 6 hours ahead | constant |
| Tokyo | 7 hours ahead | constant |
| Sydney | 8 hours ahead | +8h / +9h |
| Auckland | 10 hours ahead | +10h / +11h |
| São Paulo | 5 hours behind | constant |
| UTC | 2 hours behind | constant |
Daylight in Cape Town through the year
From about 9.9 hours in June to 14.4 hours in December. This is the part a plain clock leaves out: 17:00 is a bright evening in one month and long dark in another.
| Month | Sunrise | Sunset | Daylight |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 05:09 | 19:12 | 14h 3m |
| February | 05:40 | 18:48 | 13h 8m |
| March | 06:04 | 18:12 | 12h 8m |
| April | 06:27 | 17:31 | 11h 4m |
| May | 06:49 | 17:04 | 10h 15m |
| June | 07:05 | 16:59 | 9h 54m |
| July | 07:01 | 17:13 | 10h 12m |
| August | 06:34 | 17:34 | 11h 0m |
| September | 05:53 | 17:55 | 12h 2m |
| October | 05:13 | 18:18 | 13h 5m |
| November | 04:47 | 18:47 | 14h 0m |
| December | 04:46 | 19:11 | 14h 25m |
Daylight length is accurate. The clock times of sunrise and sunset assume each city sits at the centre of its time zone, which can put them up to about an hour and a quarter out for places near a zone's edge — Madrid being the standard example. Day length is unaffected.
Questions
About time in Cape Town
What time zone is Cape Town in?
Cape Town uses the IANA time zone Africa/Johannesburg, a fixed UTC+02:00 with no daylight saving. The same zone covers Johannesburg.
Does Cape Town observe daylight saving time?
No. Cape Town stays on UTC+02:00 all year. That does not mean the gap between Cape Town and other cities is fixed, though: when a city that does observe daylight saving changes its clocks, the difference between you and them moves even though nothing changed here.
Why does the time difference to Cape Town keep changing?
Because the two places do not change their clocks on the same weekend, and in opposite hemispheres they change in opposite directions. London is a clear example: it sits 2 hours behind, then 1 hour behind across the year rather than one fixed distance.
How much daylight does Cape Town get?
Around 14.4 hours at the longest, in December, and about 9.9 hours at the shortest, in June. The table on this page lists sunrise and sunset through the year. Times are calculated from Cape Town's latitude of -33.92° and are approximate to within about an hour for cities that sit well away from the centre of their time zone.