Forex Session Times: Asian, London and New York Open in EST and UTC

Forex session times in EST and UTC: when the Asian, London and New York sessions open and close, the overlaps, and how DST shifts them.

LSG Club · 25 October 2026 · 14 min read

Forex session times are the hours when the three big trading centres are open: the Asian session (Sydney and Tokyo), the London session and the New York session. In New York time, the Asia session runs from about 7:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. in winter (EST), London opens at 3:00 a.m. and New York runs from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; in UTC the same sessions sit at 00:00–09:00, 08:00–17:00 and 13:00–22:00 in winter and one hour earlier in summer. This reference, written for traders who keep LSG Club’s trading journal with session tags, lists every session in EST, EDT and UTC, explains the weeks when the clock changes move them and shows which pairs tend to move in which session.

One caveat before the tables: there is no official opening bell for the currency market. The hours below are the most commonly cited ones, based on the business day in each city. Brokers and sources often differ by an hour, so treat the boundaries as approximate and pick one definition for your own plan.

Forex session times at a glance

Each session is defined in its own city’s local time, which is why its time in New York or UTC moves during the year. The commonly cited local hours are:

Sydney — 07:00–16:00 Sydney time (AEST, UTC+10, in the southern winter; AEDT, UTC+11, in the southern summer).
Tokyo — 09:00–18:00 Tokyo time (JST, UTC+9 all year; Japan has no daylight saving time).
London — 08:00–17:00 London time (GMT, UTC+0, in winter; BST, UTC+1, in summer).
New York — 08:00–17:00 New York time (EST, UTC−5, in winter; EDT, UTC−4, in summer).

The market as a whole opens on Sunday at about 5:00 p.m. New York time, when Sydney starts its Monday, and closes on Friday at 5:00 p.m. New York time. That 5:00 p.m. New York moment is also the usual forex daily close and rollover.

Session times in winter: EST and UTC

From the first Sunday of November to the second Sunday of March, New York is on EST (UTC−5), London is on GMT (UTC+0) and Sydney is on its summer time, AEDT (UTC+11). In those months:

Sydney — 3:00 p.m. to 12:00 midnight EST (20:00–05:00 UTC).
Tokyo — 7:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. EST (00:00–09:00 UTC).
London — 3:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon EST (08:00–17:00 UTC).
New York — 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EST (13:00–22:00 UTC).

In winter UTC and London time are the same clock, so a London trader can read the UTC column directly. The weekly open on Sunday is at 22:00 UTC.

Session times in summer: EDT and UTC

From the first Sunday of April to the first Sunday of October, New York is on EDT (UTC−4), London is on BST (UTC+1) and Sydney is on standard time, AEST (UTC+10). In those months:

Sydney — 5:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. EDT (21:00–06:00 UTC).
Tokyo — 8:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. EDT (00:00–09:00 UTC).
London — 3:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon EDT (07:00–16:00 UTC).
New York — 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EDT (12:00–21:00 UTC).

London and New York keep the same New York-clock times all year, because the US and the UK shift in the same direction; only their UTC times move. Tokyo never changes in UTC, so it moves by an hour on the New York clock. Sydney moves two hours, because Australia changes its clocks in the opposite season. The weekly open on Sunday is at 21:00 UTC in summer.

Asia session time in EST, EDT and UTC

“Asia session time” usually means the Tokyo session, the largest Asian centre for currencies: 09:00–18:00 Tokyo time, which is 00:00–09:00 UTC all year, 7:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. EST in winter and 8:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. EDT in summer. Some sources quote the whole Asian block instead, from the Sydney open to the Tokyo close:

Winter (November to March) — about 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. EST, or 20:00–09:00 UTC.
Summer (April to early October) — about 5:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. EDT, or 21:00–09:00 UTC.
Sydney–Tokyo overlap — 7:00 p.m. to 12:00 midnight EST in winter (00:00–05:00 UTC) and 8:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. EDT in summer (00:00–06:00 UTC).

Singapore and Hong Kong (UTC+8) open an hour after Tokyo and keep Asia active until London arrives. For traders of EUR, GBP and USD pairs, Asia mostly builds the range; for JPY, AUD and NZD pairs it is a full trading session with local data and central bank news.

London session open time in EST and UTC

The London session opens at 3:00 a.m. New York time on most days of the year, both in winter (EST) and in summer (EDT), because it is defined as 08:00 London time and London is normally five hours ahead of New York. It closes at 17:00 London time, which is 12:00 noon in New York. In UTC the London open is 08:00 in winter and 07:00 in summer.

If your source says London opens at 2:00 a.m. New York time, it is using 07:00 London time as the open, when European banks and the futures pre-market start working. The exception to the 3:00 a.m. rule is the few weeks a year when the US and the UK are on different clocks: then London opens at 4:00 a.m. New York time.

New York session time

The New York forex session runs from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. New York time, which is 13:00–22:00 UTC in winter and 12:00–21:00 UTC in summer. Three moments inside it matter more than the formal open:

8:30 a.m. — most scheduled US economic data is released (jobs, inflation, retail sales), often the most volatile minutes of the day for USD pairs.
9:30 a.m. — the New York stock exchanges open, which moves US indices and often the dollar with them.
12:00 noon — London closes; liquidity in EUR and GBP pairs usually thins, apart from Federal Reserve days at 2:00 p.m.
5:00 p.m. — the New York close ends the forex day; spreads often widen briefly around the rollover.

Session overlaps

Overlaps are the hours when two centres are open at once; volume and volatility tend to be highest here.

The London–New York overlap

This is the busiest window of the day: from the New York open at 8:00 a.m. to the London close at 12:00 noon New York time. In UTC it is 13:00–17:00 in winter and 12:00–16:00 in summer. EURUSD, GBPUSD, USDCHF, USDCAD and gold are usually at their most liquid here, and the 8:30 a.m. US data falls inside it.

The Tokyo–London overlap

London opens before Tokyo closes, so the two share a short window: 3:00–4:00 a.m. EST in winter (08:00–09:00 UTC) and 3:00–5:00 a.m. EDT in summer (07:00–09:00 UTC). It is thinner than the afternoon overlap but often busy in EURJPY and GBPJPY, and it is when London first tests the range Asia built.

Clock-change weeks: when the sessions shift

Three regions change their clocks on different dates, and that is where most timing mistakes come from:

United States — summer time starts on the second Sunday of March and ends on the first Sunday of November.
United Kingdom and the EU — summer time starts on the last Sunday of March and ends on the last Sunday of October.
Sydney (New South Wales) — summer time starts on the first Sunday of October and ends on the first Sunday of April.

US and UK out of step

For two to three weeks in March and about one week at the turn of October and November, New York is on summer time while London is still (or already) on winter time. In those weeks New York is four hours behind London instead of five. The sessions keep their local hours, so on the New York clock:

London opens at 4:00 a.m. and closes at 1:00 p.m. New York time (08:00–17:00 UTC).
New York stays at 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. New York time (12:00–21:00 UTC), which is 12:00–21:00 in London.
The London–New York overlap grows to five hours, 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. New York time.
The 8:30 a.m. US data prints at 12:30 London time instead of the usual 13:30.

The dates for the coming year: 25 October to 1 November 2026, 14 to 28 March 2027 and 31 October to 7 November 2027. If you trade from Europe, these are the weeks to recheck every alarm and every scheduled release.

Sydney’s opposite season

Sydney moves its clocks forward in October and back in April. Between the first Sunday of October and the first Sunday of November, and again between the second Sunday of March and the first Sunday of April, Sydney and New York are both on summer time. In those weeks Sydney opens at 4:00 p.m. New York time (20:00 UTC), between the 3:00 p.m. winter time and the 5:00 p.m. summer time listed above.

Which pairs move in which session

A currency tends to trade most actively when its home market is open and its data is released. That gives a practical map, not a rule, of where to look:

Asian session — USDJPY, AUDUSD, NZDUSD, AUDJPY and other yen and antipodean crosses. Japanese, Australian, New Zealand and Chinese data comes out here.
London session — EURUSD, GBPUSD, EURGBP, USDCHF, EURJPY and GBPJPY. London is the largest currency centre and often sets the day’s first direction.
New York session — every USD pair, USDCAD (Canadian data also prints at 8:30 a.m.), gold and US indices.
London–New York overlap — EURUSD and GBPUSD at their deepest liquidity and usually their tightest spreads.

The best forex pairs for ICT trading article goes deeper into pair choice, and XAUUSD gold trading sessions covers how gold behaves in each window.

Sessions vs ICT kill zones

Sessions and ICT kill zones are easy to confuse. A session is the whole business day of a centre, eight or nine hours long. A kill zone, as taught by ICT (Michael J. Huddleston), is a narrower window of two to four hours inside or around a session, defined in New York time, when he expects the most purposeful price movement. The London kill zone, for example, starts before the London session opens and ends well before London closes.

This page does not repeat the kill zone hours. They are listed, with every conversion and the clock-change weeks, in the forex kill zone trading guide, and the kill zone time converter shows them in your own time zone for any date. In short: sessions describe the day, kill zones narrow down when to look for an entry.

ICT’s models also lean on the session sequence. The Power of 3 reads the day as accumulation in Asia, manipulation around the London open and distribution later, and the Judas swing is the false move that often comes right after a session open.

Worked example: one winter day on EURUSD

Here is how session times turn into marks on a chart. Take a Tuesday in January, so New York is on EST and London on GMT. The prices are an illustration, not a recommendation.

Asian range. Between 7:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. EST (00:00–09:00 UTC), EURUSD trades between 1.0842 and 1.0861, a 19-pip range. Mark both levels; resting stops sit just beyond them.
London open. At 3:00 a.m. EST (08:00 UTC) London arrives. By 3:40 a.m. price runs the Asian high to 1.0868, seven pips above it, then closes back inside the range. A run like that is a classic liquidity sweep.
The plan. A trader who reads the sweep as the false move of the day sells at 1.0850 after a bearish break on a lower timeframe. The stop goes above the sweep high with a buffer, at 1.0874, so the risk is 24 pips. The target is 1.0802, 48 pips away, which is 2R.
Position size. With a $10,000 account and 1% risk, the trader can lose $100. On EURUSD one standard lot is worth about $10 per pip, so $100 ÷ 24 pips = $4.17 per pip, or 0.41 lots after rounding down. The position size calculator does this for any pair.
New York. At 8:30 a.m. EST (13:30 UTC) US data prints inside the London–New York overlap. The trader either manages the open trade through it under a rule written in advance or, if price has not moved, closes before the release. London closes at 12:00 noon EST; by then the day’s main move is usually done.

In July, London would open at 3:00 a.m. EDT but 07:00 UTC, and the data would print at 12:30 UTC. Logging the UTC timestamp and the session name, rather than your wall-clock time, keeps such trades comparable across the year.

Common mistakes with session times

Reading GMT as UTC all year — they match only in winter. A table written in GMT is an hour off in summer if you read it as UTC.
Forgetting the gap weeks — in March and late October, London and US data move by an hour on European clocks. Most missed opens happen in those weeks.
Assuming Sydney follows the northern seasons — it moves in the opposite direction, so its New York-clock open swings by two hours over the year.
Trusting broker server time without checking it — many brokers run their server on UTC+2 or UTC+3 so that the daily candle starts at 5:00 p.m. New York time.
Mixing two session definitions — if your plan says London starts at 07:00 London time and your journal tags it from 08:00, your session statistics will quietly disagree with your rules.
Ignoring bank holidays — on a UK or US holiday liquidity can be much thinner than normal.

Session-time checklist

Use this before each trading week, and again on clock-change weeks:

Write down which offset New York, London and your own city are on this week.
Check whether this is a US–UK gap week or a Sydney transition week.
Convert the session you trade into your local time and set alarms from that list, not from memory.
Mark the previous session’s high and low before the next one opens.
List this week’s scheduled data and note its time in your local clock.
Use the kill zone converter if your plan also uses kill zones.
Log every trade with a UTC timestamp and a session tag, so the statistics stay correct when the clocks move.

A routine built around these steps is described in the forex trading routine for ICT traders. Trading involves risk of loss; practise any session-based plan on a demo account before you trade it with real money.

FAQ

What are the forex session times in EST?

In winter (EST), using commonly cited hours: Sydney 3:00 p.m. to midnight, Tokyo 7:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m., London 3:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon, New York 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. In summer (EDT) London and New York keep the same New York-clock times, Tokyo runs 8:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. and Sydney 5:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. Sources may differ by an hour.

What is the Asia session time?

The Asia session usually means Tokyo hours: 09:00–18:00 Tokyo time, which is 00:00–09:00 UTC all year, 7:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. EST in winter and 8:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. EDT in summer. Counted from the Sydney open, the Asian block starts at about 3:00 p.m. EST in winter or 5:00 p.m. EDT in summer.

What time does the London session open in EST?

At 3:00 a.m. New York time for most of the year, in both EST and EDT, because it opens at 08:00 London time. During the weeks when the US is on summer time and the UK is not (March and the turn of October and November), it opens at 4:00 a.m. New York time. Sources that use 07:00 London time as the open will say 2:00 a.m.

What is the New York session time in UTC?

The New York session runs 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. New York time, which is 13:00–22:00 UTC in winter and 12:00–21:00 UTC in summer.

When is the best time to trade forex?

Liquidity is usually deepest in the London–New York overlap, 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon New York time, and in the first hours of London. Whether it suits you depends on your pairs and on your own results by session.