Time in Nairobi
Kenya · Africa/Nairobi · latitude -1.29°
Reading your clock…
Nairobi never changes its clocks
Nairobi stays on UTC+03:00 all year round. This is worth being careful about rather than relaxed about: the gap between Nairobi 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.
Time difference from Nairobi
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 | 2 hours behind | −3h / −2h |
| New York | 7 hours behind | −8h / −7h |
| Los Angeles | 10 hours behind | −11h / −10h |
| Chicago | 8 hours behind | −9h / −8h |
| Toronto | 7 hours behind | −8h / −7h |
| Paris | 1 hour behind | −2h / −1h |
| Berlin | 1 hour behind | −2h / −1h |
| Dubai | 1 hour ahead | constant |
| Mumbai | 2 hours 30 minutes ahead | constant |
| Singapore | 5 hours ahead | constant |
| Hong Kong | 5 hours ahead | constant |
| Tokyo | 6 hours ahead | constant |
| Sydney | 7 hours ahead | +7h / +8h |
| Auckland | 9 hours ahead | +9h / +10h |
| São Paulo | 6 hours behind | constant |
| UTC | 3 hours behind | constant |
Daylight in Nairobi through the year
From about 12.1 hours in May to 12.2 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 | 06:06 | 18:17 | 12h 11m |
| February | 06:10 | 18:19 | 12h 9m |
| March | 06:05 | 18:12 | 12h 7m |
| April | 05:57 | 18:02 | 12h 5m |
| May | 05:55 | 17:58 | 12h 3m |
| June | 06:00 | 18:03 | 12h 3m |
| July | 06:05 | 18:08 | 12h 3m |
| August | 06:02 | 18:06 | 12h 4m |
| September | 05:50 | 17:57 | 12h 7m |
| October | 05:41 | 17:49 | 12h 8m |
| November | 05:41 | 17:52 | 12h 11m |
| December | 05:52 | 18:04 | 12h 12m |
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 Nairobi
What time zone is Nairobi in?
Nairobi uses the IANA time zone Africa/Nairobi, a fixed UTC+03:00 with no daylight saving.
Does Nairobi observe daylight saving time?
No. Nairobi stays on UTC+03:00 all year. That does not mean the gap between Nairobi 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 Nairobi 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 3 hours behind, then 2 hours behind across the year rather than one fixed distance.
How much daylight does Nairobi get?
Around 12.2 hours at the longest, in December, and about 12.1 hours at the shortest, in May. The table on this page lists sunrise and sunset through the year. Times are calculated from Nairobi's latitude of -1.29° and are approximate to within about an hour for cities that sit well away from the centre of their time zone.