About the World Meeting Planner
Put in the cities your team works from and the planner lays everyone’s day side by side: a colour-banded hour grid showing who is at their desk, who would be up early or staying late, and who would be asleep, with the hours when everyone is working highlighted. Click any column to see what time that is for each person.
Two things most converters get wrong are handled for the exact date you pick. Daylight saving comes from your browser’s own time-zone database, so the weeks when the US and Europe change clocks on different Sundays — when New York is four hours behind London, not five — come out right, and so do half-hour zones like India and Newfoundland and the southern hemisphere running the opposite way. Public holidays are checked per country from the Nager.Date calendar, down to the state or nation where the city’s region is known, so nobody books London on a bank holiday or Munich on a Bavarian one.
Cities, working hours and workweeks are yours to adjust — Sunday-to-Thursday offices included. Nothing you enter is stored on our server; only the country codes are sent to fetch holidays.
Click an hour to see it in everyone’s time. Columns follow the first city’s clock; small +1 / −1 marks mean the next or previous calendar day there.
A standard calendar file for Outlook, Google Calendar and Apple Calendar. The time is stored in UTC so every calendar shows it in its own zone, and the description lists each attendee’s local time.
The least-painful slot on each working day of the next seven (by the first city’s workweek), scored per person in 15-minute steps: 0 inside working hours, 1 for early or late (07:00–22:00), 3 for night, 4 on a weekend or public holiday. The score is a planning heuristic, not a measure of anyone’s actual preferences.
Save this set of cities, hours and names in this browser and bring it back in one click.
How to Use the World Meeting Planner
Set the date first — everything else depends on it. Add each attendee’s city from the list (or press Use my time zone), and put yourself or the organiser first, because the grid’s columns follow the first city’s clock. If someone keeps unusual hours, change their start and end times; if their office works Sunday to Thursday, change the workweek. The green columns are the hours when every attendee is inside working hours. Click one to see exactly what time it is for each person, then share the link so the group sees the same grid.
The Weeks When Everyone Gets the Time Wrong
North America and Europe both observe daylight saving time, but not on the same dates. Since 2007 the US and Canada move clocks forward on the second Sunday in March and back on the first Sunday in November, at 2:00 local time. The EU and the UK switch on the last Sunday of March and of October, all at the same instant, 01:00 UTC. In between, the usual gaps shrink by an hour:
- 8–28 March 2026: New York is 4 hours behind London and 5 behind Paris, instead of 5 and 6.
- 25–31 October 2026: the same one-hour squeeze, in reverse order.
- Arizona and Hawaii never change, so their gap to everyone else moves twice a year.
- The southern hemisphere runs the other way: Sydney leaves daylight saving on 5 April 2026 and starts again on 4 October, so a London–Sydney call can move by two hours across a single year.
A calendar invite is stored in the organiser’s time zone, so during those weeks a recurring 10:00 New York call lands at 14:00 in London instead of 15:00. Nothing is broken; the world just moved underneath it.
Not Every Offset Is a Whole Hour
India runs on UTC+5:30 all year, Nepal on UTC+5:45, Newfoundland on UTC−3:30 (−2:30 in summer) and Adelaide on UTC+9:30 (+10:30 in summer). When one of these cities joins, the top of the hour in London is half past somewhere else, which is why the grid marks cells that are only partly inside someone’s working day. The overlap figure is computed in 15-minute steps, so a window that opens at 13:30 is reported as 13:30.
Holidays, Weekends and Workweeks
Public holidays are the most common reason a well-planned international meeting ends up half empty. This planner checks each attendee’s local date against the Nager.Date calendar for their country — local, because a Tuesday-evening call from California is already Wednesday in Tokyo. Regional holidays are applied when the city’s state or nation is known: Edinburgh has Scottish bank holidays, Munich has Bavarian ones, Montreal has Quebec’s Fête nationale on 24 June. Holidays that close banks or schools but not most offices are shown as notes, not days off.
Two limits to be clear about. The holiday calendar lists the official dates, so multi-day closures such as the Chinese Spring Festival week, or China’s make-up working weekends, are not fully represented. And a handful of countries — India, the UAE, Israel, Saudi Arabia among them — are not in the database; the planner says “no holiday data” for those rather than implying there is no holiday.
Sharing the Inconvenience Fairly
When a team spans San Francisco, London and Singapore there is no slot inside everyone’s working day, and a fixed meeting time quietly assigns the 7 a.m. or 10 p.m. call to the same people every week. Rotating the slot spreads that cost. The fairest-slot finder scores every candidate slot per person and proposes one slot that suits each location, so the early starts take turns.
Working out whether the meeting is worth holding at all? The Meeting Cost Calculator puts a number on it. Converting a raw timestamp from a log file? Use the Unix Timestamp Converter. Browse every Everyday Calculator for more.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is the time difference between New York and London sometimes four hours instead of five?
Because the US and Europe change their clocks on different Sundays. The US springs forward on the second Sunday of March and falls back on the first Sunday of November; the EU and UK change on the last Sunday of March and the last Sunday of October. For about three weeks in March and one week around the start of November, New York is only four hours behind London. In 2026 the four-hour weeks are 8 to 28 March and 25 to 31 October.
What is the best time for a meeting between the US and Europe?
Usually late morning on the US East Coast, which is mid-afternoon in London and late afternoon in central Europe: 9:00 to 11:00 in New York overlaps with 14:00 to 16:00 in London for most of the year. The US West Coast has almost no overlap with continental Europe inside a normal 9-to-5 day, so someone has to start early or stay late. The fairest-slot finder here spreads that inconvenience instead of always putting it on the same people.
How does daylight saving time affect a recurring meeting?
A recurring invitation is anchored to the organiser's time zone, so when either side changes its clocks the meeting moves by an hour for everyone else. That is why a standing 10:00 New York call jumps from 15:00 to 14:00 in London for a few weeks each spring. Checking the next clock changes before you send the series avoids the surprise.
Does the planner account for public holidays?
Yes, for the 200-odd countries and territories the Nager.Date holiday database covers, including the US, Canada, the UK, most of Europe, Japan, Australia, Brazil and Mexico. Nationwide holidays remove that city from the overlap, and state or regional holidays are applied when the city's region is known, so Edinburgh gets Scottish bank holidays and Munich gets Bavarian ones. India, the UAE, Israel and a few others are not in the database, and the page says so rather than implying there is no holiday.
What about countries with a Sunday-to-Thursday workweek?
Each city carries its own workweek. Cities in Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan and Bangladesh default to Sunday through Thursday, and you can change any city to Monday to Friday, Monday to Saturday or Sunday to Friday. A Friday call between London and Riyadh therefore shows no overlap at all, which is the correct answer.
