Time in Sapporo
Japan · Asia/Tokyo · latitude 43.06°
Reading your clock…
Sapporo never changes its clocks
Sapporo stays on UTC+09:00 all year round. This is worth being careful about rather than relaxed about: the gap between Sapporo 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: Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya, Fukuoka share Asia/Tokyo. Sunrise and sunset differ between them because latitude does, even though the clock does not.
Time difference from Sapporo
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 | 8 hours behind | −9h / −8h |
| New York | 13 hours behind | −14h / −13h |
| Los Angeles | 16 hours behind | −17h / −16h |
| Chicago | 14 hours behind | −15h / −14h |
| Toronto | 13 hours behind | −14h / −13h |
| Paris | 7 hours behind | −8h / −7h |
| Berlin | 7 hours behind | −8h / −7h |
| Dubai | 5 hours behind | constant |
| Mumbai | 3 hours 30 minutes behind | constant |
| Singapore | 1 hour behind | constant |
| Hong Kong | 1 hour behind | constant |
| Tokyo | the same time | constant |
| Sydney | 1 hour ahead | +1h / +2h |
| Auckland | 3 hours ahead | +3h / +4h |
| São Paulo | 12 hours behind | constant |
| UTC | 9 hours behind | constant |
Daylight in Sapporo through the year
From about 9.0 hours in December to 15.4 hours in June. 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 | 07:26 | 16:57 | 9h 31m |
| February | 06:51 | 17:38 | 10h 47m |
| March | 06:04 | 18:13 | 12h 9m |
| April | 05:11 | 18:48 | 13h 37m |
| May | 04:32 | 19:22 | 14h 50m |
| June | 04:21 | 19:43 | 15h 22m |
| July | 04:39 | 19:34 | 14h 55m |
| August | 05:12 | 18:56 | 13h 44m |
| September | 05:45 | 18:02 | 12h 17m |
| October | 06:20 | 17:10 | 10h 50m |
| November | 07:00 | 16:33 | 9h 33m |
| December | 07:28 | 16:28 | 9h 0m |
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 Sapporo
What time zone is Sapporo in?
Sapporo uses the IANA time zone Asia/Tokyo, a fixed UTC+09:00 with no daylight saving. The same zone covers Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya, Fukuoka.
Does Sapporo observe daylight saving time?
No. Sapporo stays on UTC+09:00 all year. That does not mean the gap between Sapporo 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 Sapporo 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 9 hours behind, then 8 hours behind across the year rather than one fixed distance.
How much daylight does Sapporo get?
Around 15.4 hours at the longest, in June, and about 9.0 hours at the shortest, in December. The table on this page lists sunrise and sunset through the year. Times are calculated from Sapporo's latitude of 43.06° and are approximate to within about an hour for cities that sit well away from the centre of their time zone.