Current time in Sanya, China right now

It is 2:24 pm in Sanya, China 🇨🇳 right now, on Monday, September 28, 2026. The city keeps Asia/Shanghai, which is CST at UTC+8, so Sanya is 8 hours ahead of UTC, where it is 6:24 am. The sun rose in Sanya at 6:32 am and sets at 6:33 pm, which is 12 hours 2 minutes of daylight.

What time is it in Sanya right now?

The time in Sanya, China is 2:24 pm, 14:24 on a 24 hour clock, on Monday September 28, 2026. The reading above ticks from your own device against the Asia/Shanghai rules, so it stays right through a clock change rather than drifting an hour out twice a year.

Sanya sits at 18.25 degrees north and 109.51 degrees east, inside the tropics, north of the equator and 2,030 km from the equator. Its clock is set to a zone whose nominal meridian is 120.0 degrees east, and the city itself is 10.5 degrees west of that line. Those 10.5 degrees are worth 41 minutes 58 seconds of sun time, which is most of why solar noon here lands at 12:33 pm rather than on the stroke of twelve.

Sanya time zone and UTC offset

The IANA zone for Sanya, China is Asia/Shanghai. Right now it is running at UTC+8 and the abbreviation in force is CST. Sanya does not change its clocks at any point in the year. The offset stays at UTC+8 in January and in July alike, so no conversion involving Sanya ever needs a seasonal footnote.

Daylight hours in Sanya today

The sun rose in Sanya at 6:32 am and sets at 6:33 pm, which is 12 hours 2 minutes of daylight. Solar noon, the instant the sun stands at its highest over Sanya, is at 12:33 pm, which is 33 minutes after clock noon. The sun's declination today is -2.02 degrees, so at this latitude it reaches about 69.7 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 Sanya, which works from the same coordinates.

Where Sanya 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 Sanya 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 Sanya.

Best time to call Sanya

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 China

We cover 708 cities in China. These are the ones nearest to Sanya, with the time on their clocks right now.

Cities on Asia/Shanghai time

684 of our cities keep Asia/Shanghai, so every one of them reads 2:24 pm at this moment and changes its clocks on the same night as Sanya. Nearest first:

Moon phase over Sanya tonight

The moon is a waning gibbous tonight, 17.1 days into its cycle and about 94% lit. The next full moon falls on October 26, 2026 at 12:11 pm Shanghai time, and the next new moon on October 10, 2026 at 11:49 pm. Both are the same instant everywhere on Earth, printed here on the Sanya clock, which is why the calendar date can differ from the one a reader further east or west sees.

When the clocks change in Sanya

There is no clock change scheduled in Asia/Shanghai within the next 400 days, so Sanya stays at UTC+8 for the whole of that stretch.

That makes Sanya 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 Sanya is from other cities

Great-circle distance, computed from the coordinates rather than road mileage. The nearest city we cover to Sanya is Wuzhishan, China at 59 km, and the furthest is Arica, Chile at 19,983 km, which is 100% of the way to being exactly opposite.

The antipode of Sanya

Dig straight through the centre of the Earth from Sanya, China and you come out at 18.25 degrees south, 70.49 degrees west. That point is near Arica, Chile. The nearest city in our catalogue to it is Arica, Chile, 32 km away from the antipode itself, where the clock currently reads 3:24 am on Monday.

The antipode is worked out by flipping the latitude across the equator and swinging the longitude a half turn: 18.25 degrees north becomes 18.25 degrees south, and 109.51 degrees east becomes 70.49 degrees west. Two thirds of the planet is ocean and the land is unevenly spread, so most antipodes are open water: Sanya is one of the exceptions, with dry land on the far side. The local time at the antipode runs close to UTC-4, roughly twelve hours from Sanya, because a half turn of longitude is a half turn of the day.

Sunrise and sunset in Sanya

Today the sun rises in Sanya at 6:32 am and sets at 6:33 pm, giving 12 hours 2 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 Sanya.

Sun and moon in Sanya today

The sun is up in Sanya for 12 hours 2 minutes today, from 6:32 am to 6:33 pm. The moon sets in Sanya at 7:43 am and comes up again at 7:31 pm. The next phase is the last quarter on October 3, 2026. It is 97% lit at the moment, a waning gibbous, thinning by about 3.5 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 Sanya

Seven days from September 28, 2026, computed for Sanya, China at 18.25 degrees north, 109.51 degrees east, on the clock of Asia/Shanghai. 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 Sanya, China, 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 Sanya

From Sanya, China the qibla is 285.7 degrees on a true compass, which is west-northwest, or 15.7 degrees south of due west. The Kaaba is 7,237 km away, 4,497 miles, measured over the surface of the Earth.

That figure is the initial bearing of the great circle from Sanya, China 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 Sanya, China 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.

Sanya time now: common questions

What time is it in Sanya, China right now?

2:24 pm on Monday September 28, 2026. Sanya runs on CST, UTC+8.

What time zone is Sanya in?

Asia/Shanghai, currently CST at UTC+8. 684 of the cities on this site keep that zone.

What is the UTC offset for Sanya?

UTC+8 at this instant. It is UTC+8 all year round, with no seasonal change.

Does Sanya observe daylight saving time?

No. Sanya stays on UTC+8 for the whole year.

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

Sanya is 12 hours ahead of New York, where it is 2:24 am right now.

What time does the sun set in Sanya today?

6:33 pm, after a sunrise at 6:32 am and 12 hours 2 minutes of daylight.

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

18.25 degrees south, 70.49 degrees west, near Arica, Chile.

When is the best time to call Sanya from London?

Between 4:00 pm and 6:00 pm in Sanya, which is 9:00 am to 11:00 am in London.

Nearby city clocks

All cities · Timezone converter · Sunrise and sunset · Moon phases