Current time in Shanghai, China right now

It is 8:06 pm in Shanghai, China 🇨🇳 right now, on Saturday, September 26, 2026. The city keeps Asia/Shanghai, which is CST at UTC+8, so Shanghai is 8 hours ahead of UTC, where it is 12:06 pm. The sun rose in Shanghai at 5:44 am and sets at 5:46 pm, which is 12 hours 2 minutes of daylight.

What time is it in Shanghai right now?

The time in Shanghai, China is 8:06 pm, 20:06 on a 24 hour clock, on Saturday September 26, 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.

Shanghai sits at 31.23 degrees north and 121.47 degrees east, in the subtropical belt and 3,473 km from the equator. Its clock is set to a zone whose nominal meridian is 120.0 degrees east, and the city itself is 1.5 degrees east of that line. Those 1.5 degrees are worth 5 minutes 54 seconds of sun time, which is most of why solar noon here lands at 11:46 am rather than on the stroke of twelve.

Shanghai time zone and UTC offset

The IANA zone for Shanghai, China is Asia/Shanghai. Right now it is running at UTC+8 and the abbreviation in force is CST. Shanghai 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 Shanghai ever needs a seasonal footnote.

Daylight hours in Shanghai today

The sun rose in Shanghai at 5:44 am and sets at 5:46 pm, which is 12 hours 2 minutes of daylight. Solar noon, the instant the sun stands at its highest over Shanghai, is at 11:46 am, which is 14 minutes before clock noon. The sun's declination today is -1.23 degrees, so at this latitude it reaches about 57.5 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 Shanghai, which works from the same coordinates.

Where Shanghai 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 Shanghai 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 Shanghai.

Best time to call Shanghai

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 Shanghai, 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 8:06 pm at this moment and changes its clocks on the same night as Shanghai. Nearest first:

Moon phase over Shanghai tonight

The moon is a waning gibbous tonight, 15.4 days into its cycle and about 100% lit. The next full moon falls on September 27, 2026 at 12:48 am 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 Shanghai clock, which is why the calendar date can differ from the one a reader further east or west sees.

When the clocks change in Shanghai

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

That makes Shanghai 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 Shanghai is from other cities

Great-circle distance, computed from the coordinates rather than road mileage. The nearest city we cover to Shanghai is Huangpu, China at 1 km, and the furthest is Concordia, Argentina at 19,963 km, which is 100% of the way to being exactly opposite.

The antipode of Shanghai

Dig straight through the centre of the Earth from Shanghai, China and you come out at 31.23 degrees south, 58.53 degrees west. That point is near Concordia, Argentina. The nearest city in our catalogue to it is Concordia, Argentina, 52 km away from the antipode itself, where the clock currently reads 9:06 am on Saturday.

The antipode is worked out by flipping the latitude across the equator and swinging the longitude a half turn: 31.23 degrees north becomes 31.23 degrees south, and 121.47 degrees east becomes 58.53 degrees west. Two thirds of the planet is ocean and the land is unevenly spread, so most antipodes are open water: Shanghai 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 Shanghai, because a half turn of longitude is a half turn of the day.

Sunrise and sunset in Shanghai

Today the sun rises in Shanghai at 5:44 am and sets at 5:46 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 Shanghai.

Sun and moon in Shanghai today

The sun is up in Shanghai for 12 hours 2 minutes today, from 5:44 am to 5:46 pm. The moon sets in Shanghai at 5:02 am and comes up again at 5:22 pm. The next phase is the full moon on September 27, 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 Shanghai

Seven days from September 26, 2026, computed for Shanghai, China at 31.23 degrees north, 121.47 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 Shanghai, 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 Shanghai

From Shanghai, China the qibla is 284.7 degrees on a true compass, which is west-northwest, or 14.7 degrees south of due west. The Kaaba is 8,033 km away, 4,991 miles, measured over the surface of the Earth.

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

Shanghai time now: common questions

What time is it in Shanghai, China right now?

8:06 pm on Saturday September 26, 2026. Shanghai runs on CST, UTC+8.

What time zone is Shanghai in?

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

What is the UTC offset for Shanghai?

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

Does Shanghai observe daylight saving time?

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

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

Shanghai is 12 hours ahead of New York, where it is 8:06 am right now.

What time does the sun set in Shanghai today?

5:46 pm, after a sunrise at 5:44 am and 12 hours 2 minutes of daylight.

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

31.23 degrees south, 58.53 degrees west, near Concordia, Argentina.

When is the best time to call Shanghai from London?

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

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