GMT to EST Converter (Greenwich Mean Time to Eastern Time)

Mid-January 2026: EST is 5 hours behind GMT. Mid-July 2026: EDT is 4 hours behind GMT.

Greenwich Mean Time is the reference clock that sits at the prime meridian, with a fixed offset of UTC+00:00 and no summer change. New York is on Eastern Standard Time, UTC−05:00, in winter, and moves to Eastern Daylight Time, UTC−04:00, from the second Sunday of March to the first Sunday of November. The gap to GMT therefore shrinks from five hours to four while the United States is on summer time.

Use this page when a time is quoted in GMT, for example in a press release, a flight record, a shipping notice or an online event, and you want it on a New York clock. It is a pure GMT conversion. London in summer is on British Summer Time, so for a British appointment use the page for UK time instead.

How to use this tool

1. Pick a date and time in GMT. The date matters when daylight saving time is in force.
2. Read the matching time in EST, with both UTC offsets.
3. Use "Use current time" for now, or the tables below for a quick look.

Formula

EST time = GMT time − (GMT UTC offset) + (EST UTC offset)

The converter looks up both UTC offsets for the actual instant in the saved IANA time zone rules, so daylight saving changes are included automatically.

Example

Worked with the saved rules:

9:00 AM GMT on March 2, 2026 = 4:00 AM EST

6:30 PM GMT on August 3, 2026 = 2:30 PM EDT

Time difference through the year

The difference depends on the date when either place moves its clocks. These are the offsets on two reference days, from the saved IANA rules:

Clock changes in 2026

Between these dates the difference shifts by the size of the change.

GMT to EST time table

Each hour in Greenwich Mean Time with the matching Eastern Time time in winter and summer (reference days in January and July).

EST to GMT time table

Each hour in Eastern Time with the matching Greenwich Mean Time time in winter and summer (reference days in January and July).

Hours that work in both places

Hours (on the January reference day) that fall between 8:00 AM and 8:00 PM in both GMT and EST:

Check the summer column above when one of the places is on daylight saving time.

GMT, UTC and British time are three different labels

For ordinary purposes GMT and Coordinated Universal Time show the same clock reading, and the converter treats GMT as a fixed zone. The difference is in the definition: UTC is kept by atomic clocks, while GMT is the older mean solar time at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. The prime meridian was agreed at the 1884 International Meridian Conference in Washington.

In the United Kingdom the clocks follow GMT only in winter. From the last Sunday of March to the last Sunday of October, London is one hour ahead of GMT on British Summer Time, so "UK time" and "GMT" are different for about seven months of the year.

A noon example for each season

At 12:00 GMT it is 7:00 a.m. in New York in winter and 8:00 a.m. in New York from March to November. In both seasons, a GMT event that ends at 17:00 leaves the Eastern working day still going, with the New York clock at noon or at 1 p.m.

Weather bulletins, aviation notices and many scientific releases are written in UTC, which they sometimes call Zulu time. To read such a time on a New York clock, subtract five hours in winter and four in summer.