Current time in Houston, Texas right now

It is 9:17 pm in Houston, Texas 🇺🇸 right now, on Saturday, September 26, 2026. The city keeps America/Chicago, which is CDT at UTC-5, so Houston is 5 hours behind of UTC, where it is 2:17 am. The sun rose in Houston at 7:12 am and sets at 7:13 pm, which is 12 hours 1 minute of daylight.

What time is it in Houston right now?

The time in Houston, Texas is 9:17 pm, 21:17 on a 24 hour clock, on Saturday September 26, 2026. The reading above ticks from your own device against the America/Chicago rules, so it stays right through a clock change rather than drifting an hour out twice a year.

Houston sits at 29.76 degrees north and 95.37 degrees west, just outside the tropics and 3,309 km from the equator. Its clock is set to a zone whose nominal meridian is 75.0 degrees west, and the city itself is 20.4 degrees west of that line. Those 20.4 degrees are worth 81 minutes 29 seconds of sun time, which is most of why solar noon here lands at 1:13 pm rather than on the stroke of twelve.

Houston time zone and UTC offset

The IANA zone for Houston, Texas is America/Chicago. Right now it is running at UTC-5 and the abbreviation in force is CDT. Houston is on summer time at the moment, which is why the offset reads UTC-5 rather than the UTC-6 it keeps in winter.

Daylight hours in Houston today

The sun rose in Houston at 7:12 am and sets at 7:13 pm, which is 12 hours 1 minute of daylight. Solar noon, the instant the sun stands at its highest over Houston, is at 1:13 pm, which is 73 minutes after clock noon. The sun's declination today is -1.46 degrees, so at this latitude it reaches about 58.8 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 Houston, which works from the same coordinates.

Where Houston 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 Houston 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 Houston.

Best time to call Houston

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 United States

We cover 415 cities in United States. These are the ones nearest to Houston, with the time on their clocks right now.

Cities on America/Chicago time

100 of our cities keep America/Chicago, so every one of them reads 9:17 pm at this moment and changes its clocks on the same night as Houston. Nearest first:

Moon phase over Houston tonight

The moon is a waning gibbous tonight, 16.0 days into its cycle and about 98% lit. The next full moon falls on October 25, 2026 at 11:11 pm Chicago time, and the next new moon on October 10, 2026 at 10:49 am. Both are the same instant everywhere on Earth, printed here on the Houston clock, which is why the calendar date can differ from the one a reader further east or west sees.

When the clocks change in Houston

The next change is on Sunday, November 1, 2026, 35 days from now, when the clocks in Houston go back 1 hour at 1:59 am and the offset moves from UTC-5 to UTC-6.

Two things follow from that. Any standing call with Houston 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 Houston is from other cities

Great-circle distance, computed from the coordinates rather than road mileage. The nearest city we cover to Houston is Pasadena, Texas at 17 km, and the furthest is Vacoas, Mauritius at 17,093 km, which is 85% of the way to being exactly opposite.

The antipode of Houston

Dig straight through the centre of the Earth from Houston, Texas and you come out at 29.76 degrees south, 84.63 degrees east. That point is in the Indian Ocean. The nearest city in our catalogue to it is Vacoas, Mauritius, 2,922 km away from the antipode itself, where the clock currently reads 6:17 am on Sunday.

The antipode is worked out by flipping the latitude across the equator and swinging the longitude a half turn: 29.76 degrees north becomes 29.76 degrees south, and 95.37 degrees west becomes 84.63 degrees east. Two thirds of the planet is ocean and the land is unevenly spread, so most antipodes are open water: Houston is no exception. The local time at the antipode runs close to UTC+7, roughly twelve hours from Houston, because a half turn of longitude is a half turn of the day.

Sunrise and sunset in Houston

Today the sun rises in Houston at 7:12 am and sets at 7:13 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 Houston.

Sun and moon in Houston today

The sun is up in Houston for 12 hours 1 minute today, from 7:12 am to 7:13 pm. The moon sets in Houston at 7:05 am and comes up again at 7:08 pm. The next phase is the last quarter on October 3, 2026. The moon is full, or as near to it as makes no difference, and the whole of the face turned towards us is lit.

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 Houston

Seven days from September 26, 2026, computed for Houston, TX at 29.76 degrees north, 95.37 degrees west, on the clock of America/Chicago. 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 Houston, TX, 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 Houston

From Houston, TX the qibla is 45.5 degrees on a true compass, which is northeast, or 44.5 degrees north of due east. The Kaaba is 12,574 km away, 7,813 miles, measured over the surface of the Earth.

That figure is the initial bearing of the great circle from Houston, TX 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 Houston, TX 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.

Houston time now: common questions

What time is it in Houston, Texas right now?

9:17 pm on Saturday September 26, 2026. Houston runs on CDT, UTC-5.

What time zone is Houston in?

America/Chicago, currently CDT at UTC-5. 100 of the cities on this site keep that zone.

What is the UTC offset for Houston?

UTC-5 at this instant. It alternates between UTC-6 and UTC-5 across the year.

Does Houston observe daylight saving time?

Yes. The next change is November 1, 2026, when the clocks go back.

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

Houston is 1 hour behind of New York, where it is 10:17 pm right now.

What time does the sun set in Houston today?

7:13 pm, after a sunrise at 7:12 am and 12 hours 1 minute of daylight.

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

29.76 degrees south, 84.63 degrees east, in the Indian Ocean.

When is the best time to call Houston from London?

Between 9:00 am and 12:00 pm in Houston, which is 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm in London.

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