Current time in Preston, United Kingdom right now

It is 5:03 pm in Preston, United Kingdom 🇬🇧 right now, on Saturday, September 26, 2026. The city keeps Europe/London, which is BST at UTC+1, so Preston is 1 hour ahead of UTC, where it is 4:03 pm. The sun rose in Preston at 7:04 am and sets at 7:00 pm, which is 11 hours 56 minutes of daylight.

What time is it in Preston right now?

The time in Preston, United Kingdom is 5:03 pm, 17:03 on a 24 hour clock, on Saturday September 26, 2026. The reading above ticks from your own device against the Europe/London rules, so it stays right through a clock change rather than drifting an hour out twice a year.

Preston sits at 53.76 degrees north and 2.70 degrees west, high in the temperate belt and 5,978 km from the equator. Its clock is set to a zone whose nominal meridian is 15.0 degrees east, and the city itself is 17.7 degrees west of that line. Those 17.7 degrees are worth 70 minutes 49 seconds of sun time, which is most of why solar noon here lands at 1:02 pm rather than on the stroke of twelve.

Preston time zone and UTC offset

The IANA zone for Preston, United Kingdom is Europe/London. Right now it is running at UTC+1 and the abbreviation in force is BST. Preston is on summer time at the moment, which is why the offset reads UTC+1 rather than the UTC+0 it keeps in winter.

Daylight hours in Preston today

The sun rose in Preston at 7:04 am and sets at 7:00 pm, which is 11 hours 56 minutes of daylight. Solar noon, the instant the sun stands at its highest over Preston, is at 1:02 pm, which is 62 minutes after clock noon. The sun's declination today is -1.36 degrees, so at this latitude it reaches about 34.9 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 Preston, which works from the same coordinates.

Where Preston 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 Preston 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 Preston.

Best time to call Preston

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 Kingdom

We cover 107 cities in United Kingdom. These are the ones nearest to Preston, with the time on their clocks right now.

Cities on Europe/London time

107 of our cities keep Europe/London, so every one of them reads 5:03 pm at this moment and changes its clocks on the same night as Preston. Nearest first:

Moon phase over Preston tonight

The moon is a waning gibbous tonight, 15.5 days into its cycle and about 99% lit. The next full moon falls on September 26, 2026 at 5:48 pm London time, and the next new moon on October 10, 2026 at 4:49 pm. Both are the same instant everywhere on Earth, printed here on the Preston clock, which is why the calendar date can differ from the one a reader further east or west sees.

When the clocks change in Preston

The next change is on Sunday, October 25, 2026, 28 days from now, when the clocks in Preston go back 1 hour at 1:59 am and the offset moves from UTC+1 to UTC+0.

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

Great-circle distance, computed from the coordinates rather than road mileage. The nearest city we cover to Preston is Blackburn, United Kingdom at 15 km, and the furthest is Dunedin, New Zealand at 19,013 km, which is 95% of the way to being exactly opposite.

The antipode of Preston

Dig straight through the centre of the Earth from Preston, United Kingdom and you come out at 53.76 degrees south, 177.30 degrees east. That point is in the South Pacific Ocean. The nearest city in our catalogue to it is Dunedin, New Zealand, 1,002 km away from the antipode itself, where the clock currently reads 5:03 am on Sunday.

The antipode is worked out by flipping the latitude across the equator and swinging the longitude a half turn: 53.76 degrees north becomes 53.76 degrees south, and 2.70 degrees west becomes 177.30 degrees east. Two thirds of the planet is ocean and the land is unevenly spread, so most antipodes are open water: Preston is no exception. The local time at the antipode runs close to UTC-11, roughly twelve hours from Preston, because a half turn of longitude is a half turn of the day.

Sunrise and sunset in Preston

Today the sun rises in Preston at 7:04 am and sets at 7:00 pm, giving 11 hours 56 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 Preston.

Sun and moon in Preston today

The sun is up in Preston for 11 hours 56 minutes today, from 7:04 am to 7:00 pm. The moon sets in Preston at 6:43 am and comes up again at 6:36 pm. The next phase is the full moon on September 26, 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 Preston

Seven days from September 26, 2026, computed for Preston, United Kingdom at 53.76 degrees north, 2.70 degrees west, on the clock of Europe/London. 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 Preston, United Kingdom, 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 Preston

From Preston, United Kingdom the qibla is 118.2 degrees on a true compass, which is east-southeast, or 28.2 degrees south of due east. The Kaaba is 5,066 km away, 3,148 miles, measured over the surface of the Earth.

That figure is the initial bearing of the great circle from Preston, United Kingdom 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 Preston, United Kingdom 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.

Preston time now: common questions

What time is it in Preston, United Kingdom right now?

5:03 pm on Saturday September 26, 2026. Preston runs on BST, UTC+1.

What time zone is Preston in?

Europe/London, currently BST at UTC+1. 107 of the cities on this site keep that zone.

What is the UTC offset for Preston?

UTC+1 at this instant. It alternates between UTC+0 and UTC+1 across the year.

Does Preston observe daylight saving time?

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

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

Preston is 5 hours ahead of New York, where it is 12:03 pm right now.

What time does the sun set in Preston today?

7:00 pm, after a sunrise at 7:04 am and 11 hours 56 minutes of daylight.

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

53.76 degrees south, 177.30 degrees east, in the South Pacific Ocean.

When is the best time to call Preston from London?

Between 9:00 am and 6:00 pm in Preston, which is 9:00 am to 6:00 pm in London.

Nearby city clocks

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