Current time in Cologne, Germany right now

It is 2:30 pm in Cologne, Germany 🇩🇪 right now, on Friday, September 25, 2026. The city keeps Europe/Berlin, which is CEST at UTC+2, so Cologne is 2 hours ahead of UTC, where it is 12:30 pm. The sun rose in Cologne at 7:23 am and sets at 7:24 pm, which is 12 hours 1 minute of daylight.

What time is it in Cologne right now?

The time in Cologne, Germany is 2:30 pm, 14:30 on a 24 hour clock, on Friday September 25, 2026. The reading above ticks from your own device against the Europe/Berlin rules, so it stays right through a clock change rather than drifting an hour out twice a year.

Cologne sits at 50.94 degrees north and 6.96 degrees east, well into the temperate belt and 5,664 km from the equator. Its clock is set to a zone whose nominal meridian is 30.0 degrees east, and the city itself is 23.0 degrees west of that line. Those 23.0 degrees are worth 92 minutes 10 seconds of sun time, which is most of why solar noon here lands at 1:24 pm rather than on the stroke of twelve.

Cologne time zone and UTC offset

The IANA zone for Cologne, Germany is Europe/Berlin. Right now it is running at UTC+2 and the abbreviation in force is CEST. Cologne is on summer time at the moment, which is why the offset reads UTC+2 rather than the UTC+1 it keeps in winter.

Daylight hours in Cologne today

The sun rose in Cologne at 7:23 am and sets at 7:24 pm, which is 12 hours 1 minute of daylight. Solar noon, the instant the sun stands at its highest over Cologne, is at 1:24 pm, which is 84 minutes after clock noon. The sun's declination today is -0.96 degrees, so at this latitude it reaches about 38.1 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 Cologne, which works from the same coordinates.

Where Cologne 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 Cologne 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 Cologne.

Best time to call Cologne

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 Germany

We cover 101 cities in Germany. These are the ones nearest to Cologne, with the time on their clocks right now.

Cities on Europe/Berlin time

101 of our cities keep Europe/Berlin, so every one of them reads 2:30 pm at this moment and changes its clocks on the same night as Cologne. Nearest first:

Moon phase over Cologne 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 6:48 pm Berlin time, and the next new moon on October 10, 2026 at 5:49 pm. Both are the same instant everywhere on Earth, printed here on the Cologne clock, which is why the calendar date can differ from the one a reader further east or west sees.

When the clocks change in Cologne

The next change is on Sunday, October 25, 2026, 30 days from now, when the clocks in Cologne go back 1 hour at 2:59 am and the offset moves from UTC+2 to UTC+1.

Two things follow from that. Any standing call with Cologne shifts by an hour on that date unless the other side moves the same weekend, and every offset printed on this page is the offset for today rather than a fixed property of the city.

How far Cologne is from other cities

Great-circle distance, computed from the coordinates rather than road mileage. The nearest city we cover to Cologne is Nippes, Germany at 3 km, and the furthest is Dunedin, New Zealand at 18,680 km, which is 93% of the way to being exactly opposite.

The antipode of Cologne

Dig straight through the centre of the Earth from Cologne, Germany and you come out at 50.94 degrees south, 173.04 degrees west. That point is in the South Pacific Ocean. The nearest city in our catalogue to it is Dunedin, New Zealand, 1,335 km away from the antipode itself, where the clock currently reads 12:30 am on Saturday.

The antipode is worked out by flipping the latitude across the equator and swinging the longitude a half turn: 50.94 degrees north becomes 50.94 degrees south, and 6.96 degrees east becomes 173.04 degrees west. Two thirds of the planet is ocean and the land is unevenly spread, so most antipodes are open water: Cologne is no exception. The local time at the antipode runs close to UTC-10, roughly twelve hours from Cologne, because a half turn of longitude is a half turn of the day.

Sunrise and sunset in Cologne

Today the sun rises in Cologne at 7:23 am and sets at 7:24 pm, giving 12 hours 1 minute 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 Cologne.

Sun and moon in Cologne today

The sun is up in Cologne for 12 hours 1 minute today, from 7:23 am to 7:24 pm. The moon sets in Cologne at 5:44 am and comes up again at 6:47 pm. The next phase is the full moon on September 26, 2026. It is 98% lit at the moment, a full moon, filling out by about 2.9 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 Cologne

Seven days from September 25, 2026, computed for Cologne, Germany at 50.94 degrees north, 6.96 degrees east, on the clock of Europe/Berlin. 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 Cologne, Germany, 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 Cologne

From Cologne, Germany the qibla is 126.7 degrees on a true compass, which is southeast, or 36.7 degrees south of due east. The Kaaba is 4,345 km away, 2,700 miles, measured over the surface of the Earth.

That figure is the initial bearing of the great circle from Cologne, Germany 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 Cologne, Germany 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.

Cologne time now: common questions

What time is it in Cologne, Germany right now?

2:30 pm on Friday September 25, 2026. Cologne runs on CEST, UTC+2.

What time zone is Cologne in?

Europe/Berlin, currently CEST at UTC+2. 101 of the cities on this site keep that zone.

What is the UTC offset for Cologne?

UTC+2 at this instant. It alternates between UTC+1 and UTC+2 across the year.

Does Cologne observe daylight saving time?

Yes. The next change is October 25, 2026, when the clocks go back.

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

Cologne is 6 hours ahead of New York, where it is 8:30 am right now.

What time does the sun set in Cologne today?

7:24 pm, after a sunrise at 7:23 am and 12 hours 1 minute of daylight.

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

50.94 degrees south, 173.04 degrees west, in the South Pacific Ocean.

When is the best time to call Cologne from London?

Between 10:00 am and 6:00 pm in Cologne, which is 9:00 am to 5:00 pm in London.

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