Current time in Chennai, India right now

It is 7:01 pm in Chennai, India 🇮🇳 right now, on Friday, September 25, 2026. The city keeps Asia/Kolkata, which is IST at UTC+5:30, so Chennai is 5 hours 30 minutes ahead of UTC, where it is 1:31 pm. The sun rose in Chennai at 5:58 am and sets at 6:03 pm, which is 12 hours 5 minutes of daylight.

What time is it in Chennai right now?

The time in Chennai, India is 7:01 pm, 19:01 on a 24 hour clock, on Friday September 25, 2026. The reading above ticks from your own device against the Asia/Kolkata rules, so it stays right through a clock change rather than drifting an hour out twice a year.

Chennai sits at 13.08 degrees north and 80.27 degrees east, inside the tropics, north of the equator and 1,455 km from the equator. Its clock is set to a zone whose nominal meridian is 82.5 degrees east, and the city itself is 2.2 degrees west of that line. Those 2.2 degrees are worth 8 minutes 55 seconds of sun time, which is most of why solar noon here lands at 12:01 pm rather than on the stroke of twelve.

Chennai time zone and UTC offset

The IANA zone for Chennai, India is Asia/Kolkata. Right now it is running at UTC+5:30 and the abbreviation in force is IST. Chennai does not change its clocks at any point in the year. The offset stays at UTC+5:30 in January and in July alike, so no conversion involving Chennai ever needs a seasonal footnote.

Daylight hours in Chennai today

The sun rose in Chennai at 5:58 am and sets at 6:03 pm, which is 12 hours 5 minutes of daylight. Solar noon, the instant the sun stands at its highest over Chennai, is at 12:01 pm, which is 1 minutes after clock noon. The sun's declination today is -0.88 degrees, so at this latitude it reaches about 76.0 degrees above the horizon at its highest, to the south.

The full month by month picture for this city, the extremes of the year and every twilight band are on the sunrise and sunset page for Chennai, which works from the same coordinates.

Where Chennai is on the map

The marker sits at the coordinates this whole page is computed from, so the sun times, the distances and the solar noon above all belong to this exact point rather than to the wider metropolitan area.

Time difference between Chennai and major cities

Every row below is computed at this instant, so daylight saving on either side is already in it. A positive figure means that city's clock reads later than Chennai.

Best time to call Chennai

Treating a working day as 9am to 6pm on both sides, this is the window the two cities genuinely share. Some of these pairs have no shared working hour at all, which is worth knowing before a meeting is proposed.

Other cities in India

We cover 537 cities in India. These are the ones nearest to Chennai, with the time on their clocks right now.

Cities on Asia/Kolkata time

537 of our cities keep Asia/Kolkata, so every one of them reads 7:01 pm at this moment and changes its clocks on the same night as Chennai. Nearest first:

Moon phase over Chennai tonight

The moon is a full moon tonight, 14.4 days into its cycle and about 100% lit. The next full moon falls on September 26, 2026 at 10:18 pm Kolkata time, and the next new moon on October 10, 2026 at 9:19 pm. Both are the same instant everywhere on Earth, printed here on the Chennai clock, which is why the calendar date can differ from the one a reader further east or west sees.

When the clocks change in Chennai

There is no clock change scheduled in Asia/Kolkata within the next 400 days, so Chennai stays at UTC+5:30 for the whole of that stretch.

That makes Chennai an easy city to schedule against: a meeting fixed at a given hour here holds its relationship to UTC all year, and only the other end of the call can move.

How far Chennai is from other cities

Great-circle distance, computed from the coordinates rather than road mileage. The nearest city we cover to Chennai is Madhavaram, India at 8 km, and the furthest is San Martin, Peru at 17,748 km, which is 89% of the way to being exactly opposite.

The antipode of Chennai

Dig straight through the centre of the Earth from Chennai, India and you come out at 13.08 degrees south, 99.73 degrees west. That point is in the South Pacific Ocean. The nearest city in our catalogue to it is San Martin, Peru, 2,267 km away from the antipode itself, where the clock currently reads 8:31 am on Friday.

The antipode is worked out by flipping the latitude across the equator and swinging the longitude a half turn: 13.08 degrees north becomes 13.08 degrees south, and 80.27 degrees east becomes 99.73 degrees west. Two thirds of the planet is ocean and the land is unevenly spread, so most antipodes are open water: Chennai is no exception. The local time at the antipode runs close to UTC-6:30, roughly twelve hours from Chennai, because a half turn of longitude is a half turn of the day.

Sunrise and sunset in Chennai

Today the sun rises in Chennai at 5:58 am and sets at 6:03 pm, giving 12 hours 5 minutes of daylight. The dedicated page for this city carries the month by month table, the longest and shortest days of 2026, the golden and blue hour bands at both ends of the day, and all three twilight stages: sunrise and sunset times in Chennai.

Sun and moon in Chennai today

The sun is up in Chennai for 12 hours 5 minutes today, from 5:58 am to 6:03 pm. The moon sets in Chennai at 4:34 am and comes up again at 5:07 pm. The next phase is the full moon on September 26, 2026. It is 98% lit at the moment, a waxing gibbous, filling out by about 3.2 percentage points a day.

Twilight is graded by how far the sun has dropped below the horizon. Civil twilight ends six degrees down, which is roughly the point at which you need a light to read outside. Nautical twilight ends at twelve degrees, when the horizon at sea stops being usable for a sextant sight. Astronomical twilight ends at eighteen degrees, which is full darkness for an observer.

Golden hour is the stretch with the sun between six degrees above the horizon and four below it, and blue hour runs from there down to six degrees below. Neither is literally an hour: each is as long as the sun takes to cross those few degrees, which is minutes near the equator and can be most of the evening at high latitude.

Moonrise and moonset are computed to the moment the moon's upper edge touches a flat horizon, allowing for refraction, for the size of the disc and for the moon's parallax, which together put the centre of the moon at 0.125 degrees above the horizon at the instant it rises. That is a different horizon from the one sunrise uses, and it is why a moonrise time cannot be worked out with a sunrise formula.

Prayer times in Chennai

Seven days from September 25, 2026, computed for Chennai, India at 13.08 degrees north, 80.27 degrees east, on the clock of Asia/Kolkata. The method is Muslim World League (Muslim World League, Mecca), which puts Fajr at 18.0 degrees below the horizon and Isha at 17.0 degrees. Asr uses the Standard shadow ratio of 1, which is the Shafi'i, Maliki and Hanbali position.

Dhuhr is solar noon at Chennai, India, the instant the Sun crosses the local meridian, so it moves with longitude inside the time zone and with the equation of time through the year rather than sitting at a fixed clock reading. Sunrise and Maghrib are the standard refracted horizon, the same 0.833 degrees every almanac uses. Every figure above is computed from the Sun's position for this exact coordinate; none of it is copied from a table.

Different methods disagree, and that is expected rather than an error. Fajr under ISNA at 15 degrees comes later than Fajr under Egyptian General Authority of Survey at 19.5 degrees, by twenty minutes or more depending on latitude and season. Follow whichever your local mosque follows.

Qibla direction from Chennai

From Chennai, India the qibla is 287.9 degrees on a true compass, which is west-northwest, or 17.9 degrees south of due west. The Kaaba is 4,381 km away, 2,722 miles, measured over the surface of the Earth.

That figure is the initial bearing of the great circle from Chennai, India to 21.4225 degrees north, 39.8262 degrees east, which is the Kaaba inside Masjid al-Haram.

The bearing is measured from true north, not magnetic north. A magnetic compass points at the magnetic pole, and the difference between the two can be anything from nothing to more than twenty degrees depending where you are, so check your compass reading against magnetic declination for Chennai, India before you use it. A phone compass set to true north, or the shadow of a vertical stick at local solar noon, avoids the problem entirely.

Chennai time now: common questions

What time is it in Chennai, India right now?

7:01 pm on Friday September 25, 2026. Chennai runs on IST, UTC+5:30.

What time zone is Chennai in?

Asia/Kolkata, currently IST at UTC+5:30. 537 of the cities on this site keep that zone.

What is the UTC offset for Chennai?

UTC+5:30 at this instant. It is UTC+5:30 all year round, with no seasonal change.

Does Chennai observe daylight saving time?

No. Chennai stays on UTC+5:30 for the whole year.

How many hours ahead or behind is Chennai of New York?

Chennai is 9 hours 30 minutes ahead of New York, where it is 9:31 am right now.

What time does the sun set in Chennai today?

6:03 pm, after a sunrise at 5:58 am and 12 hours 5 minutes of daylight.

What is on the exact opposite side of the Earth from Chennai?

13.08 degrees south, 99.73 degrees west, in the South Pacific Ocean.

When is the best time to call Chennai from London?

Between 1:30 pm and 6:00 pm in Chennai, which is 9:00 am to 1:30 pm in London.

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