Current time in Madison, Wisconsin right now

It is 6:56 pm in Madison, Wisconsin 🇺🇸 right now, on Saturday, September 26, 2026. The city keeps America/Chicago, which is CDT at UTC-5, so Madison is 5 hours behind of UTC, where it is 11:56 pm. The sun rose in Madison at 6:49 am and sets at 6:48 pm, which is 11 hours 58 minutes of daylight.

What time is it in Madison right now?

The time in Madison, Wisconsin is 6:56 pm, 18:56 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.

Madison sits at 43.07 degrees north and 89.40 degrees west, at a middle latitude and 4,790 km from the equator. Its clock is set to a zone whose nominal meridian is 75.0 degrees west, and the city itself is 14.4 degrees west of that line. Those 14.4 degrees are worth 57 minutes 36 seconds of sun time, which is most of why solar noon here lands at 12:49 pm rather than on the stroke of twelve.

Madison time zone and UTC offset

The IANA zone for Madison, Wisconsin is America/Chicago. Right now it is running at UTC-5 and the abbreviation in force is CDT. Madison 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 Madison today

The sun rose in Madison at 6:49 am and sets at 6:48 pm, which is 11 hours 58 minutes of daylight. Solar noon, the instant the sun stands at its highest over Madison, is at 12:49 pm, which is 49 minutes after clock noon. The sun's declination today is -1.45 degrees, so at this latitude it reaches about 45.5 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 Madison, which works from the same coordinates.

Where Madison 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 Madison 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 Madison.

Best time to call Madison

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 Madison, 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 6:56 pm at this moment and changes its clocks on the same night as Madison. Nearest first:

Moon phase over Madison tonight

The moon is a waning gibbous tonight, 15.9 days into its cycle and about 99% 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 Madison clock, which is why the calendar date can differ from the one a reader further east or west sees.

When the clocks change in Madison

The next change is on Sunday, November 1, 2026, 35 days from now, when the clocks in Madison 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 Madison 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 Madison is from other cities

Great-circle distance, computed from the coordinates rather than road mileage. The nearest city we cover to Madison is Rockford, Illinois at 93 km, and the furthest is Mandurah, Australia at 17,529 km, which is 88% of the way to being exactly opposite.

The antipode of Madison

Dig straight through the centre of the Earth from Madison, Wisconsin and you come out at 43.07 degrees south, 90.60 degrees east. That point is in the Indian Ocean. The nearest city in our catalogue to it is Mandurah, Australia, 2,486 km away from the antipode itself, where the clock currently reads 7:56 am on Sunday.

The antipode is worked out by flipping the latitude across the equator and swinging the longitude a half turn: 43.07 degrees north becomes 43.07 degrees south, and 89.40 degrees west becomes 90.60 degrees east. Two thirds of the planet is ocean and the land is unevenly spread, so most antipodes are open water: Madison is no exception. The local time at the antipode runs close to UTC+7, roughly twelve hours from Madison, because a half turn of longitude is a half turn of the day.

Sunrise and sunset in Madison

Today the sun rises in Madison at 6:49 am and sets at 6:48 pm, giving 11 hours 58 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 Madison.

Sun and moon in Madison today

The sun is up in Madison for 11 hours 58 minutes today, from 6:49 am to 6:48 pm. The moon sets in Madison at 6:45 am and comes up again at 6:35 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 Madison

Seven days from September 26, 2026, computed for Madison, WI at 43.07 degrees north, 89.40 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 Madison, WI, 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 Madison

From Madison, WI the qibla is 47.2 degrees on a true compass, which is northeast, or 42.8 degrees north of due east. The Kaaba is 11,165 km away, 6,937 miles, measured over the surface of the Earth.

That figure is the initial bearing of the great circle from Madison, WI to 21.4225 degrees north, 39.8262 degrees east, which is the Kaaba inside Masjid al-Haram. That reads as a surprise on a flat map, where Mecca sits well to the southeast. A flat map is not the Earth. The shortest path from Madison to Mecca is a great circle that runs northeast over the Atlantic and Europe, and the qibla is the bearing of that path where you stand.

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 Madison, WI 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.

Madison time now: common questions

What time is it in Madison, Wisconsin right now?

6:56 pm on Saturday September 26, 2026. Madison runs on CDT, UTC-5.

What time zone is Madison in?

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

What is the UTC offset for Madison?

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

Does Madison observe daylight saving time?

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

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

Madison is 1 hour behind of New York, where it is 7:56 pm right now.

What time does the sun set in Madison today?

6:48 pm, after a sunrise at 6:49 am and 11 hours 58 minutes of daylight.

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

43.07 degrees south, 90.60 degrees east, in the Indian Ocean.

When is the best time to call Madison from London?

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

Nearby city clocks

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