Forex Market Hours
By Joey van Diest, founder and editor Updated
The forex market runs through four overlapping sessions, each named for the city where it is centered: Sydney (7 am-4 pm Sydney time, 21:00 UTC-06:00 UTC today), Tokyo (00:00 UTC-09:00 UTC), London (07:00 UTC-16:00 UTC) and New York (12:00 UTC-21:00 UTC). The market is open continuously from the Sydney open on Monday morning to the New York close on Friday afternoon. The board below converts all four into your own local time, with live open/closed status and a countdown to the next open or close.
Sydney
21:00 UTC to 06:00 UTC · Mon to Fri
Tokyo
00:00 UTC to 09:00 UTC · Mon to Fri
London
07:00 UTC to 16:00 UTC · Mon to Fri
New York
12:00 UTC to 21:00 UTC · Mon to Fri
Session overlaps
London and New York overlap for several hours each afternoon London time, and this is the single busiest stretch of the forex day: both of the market's two deepest liquidity pools are open together, so spreads tend to be tightest and moves tend to be sharpest here.
Sydney and Tokyo overlap for a few hours each morning in Asia, handing the session off with some liquidity in common rather than a clean break. Tokyo and London also overlap briefly as the Asian session winds down and Europe wakes up.
When does the London session open?
London trading sessions start on 8 am in London and end on 5 pm in London. Sessions run from Monday through Friday. Currently it appears in UTC as 07:00 UTC until 16:00 UTC; however, because of changes in daylight savings (British Summer Time) the session times will also change by one hour. That's why the board displays what you see on your own clock instead of displaying a static UTC number.
When does the Asian session open?
Tokyo, the session most traders mean by "the Asian session", opens at 9 am Tokyo time and runs to 6 pm Tokyo time - currently 00:00 UTC to 09:00 UTC in UTC. Sydney opens earlier still, at 7 am Sydney time (21:00 UTC UTC), and is the first session of the trading week.
When does the forex market close, and reopen?
The market closes for the weekend when the New York session ends on Friday afternoon, New York time - currently 21:00 UTC UTC. It reopens when the Sydney session begins on Monday morning, Sydney time. Because Sydney sits so far ahead of UTC, that Monday-morning open lands late on Sunday for UTC and for anyone in the Americas or Europe - the live board above translates it into your own clock so there is no mental time-zone arithmetic.
Forex session times in UTC
A plain reference table, no conversion needed. Each session runs Monday to Friday in its own local time; the UTC columns below reflect today's daylight-saving state and can shift by an hour when a clock change happens on either side of the world.
| Session | Local hours | UTC today |
|---|---|---|
| Sydney | 7 am to 4 pm (Sydney time) | 21:00 UTC to 06:00 UTC |
| Tokyo | 9 am to 6 pm (Tokyo time) | 00:00 UTC to 09:00 UTC |
| London | 8 am to 5 pm (London time) | 07:00 UTC to 16:00 UTC |
| New York | 8 am to 5 pm (New York time) | 12:00 UTC to 21:00 UTC |
Stock market hours, separately
Forex trades around session hours; stock exchanges keep their own separate schedules with holidays and early closes. For NYSE, Nasdaq, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo and Hong Kong Stock Exchange status, see the stock market hours page.
Frequently asked questions
- What time does the London session open?
- London opens at 8 am London time, which is 07:00 UTC today, and closes at 5 pm London time (16:00 UTC). The board above converts both into your own local time automatically.
- What time does the forex market open?
- The trading week opens with the Sydney session on Monday morning, Sydney time, currently 21:00 UTC. Because Sydney is so far ahead of UTC, that Monday-morning open falls late on Sunday in UTC and in most Western timezones - the live board above shows the exact moment in your own clock.
- When does the forex market close?
- The week ends when the New York session closes on Friday afternoon, New York time, currently 21:00 UTC. The market then stays shut over the weekend until the Sydney session reopens Monday morning.
- Which session overlap is most active?
- The London-New York overlap, currently 12:00 UTC to 16:00 UTC. Both of the world's two largest forex trading centers are open at once, which is why this window carries the deepest liquidity and the tightest spreads of the trading day.
Embed this on your site
The live session board is free to embed, unbranded apart from a small credit link. Paste this where HTML is allowed:
<iframe src="https://economicium.com/embed/forex-market-hours/" width="100%" height="420" style="border:0" loading="lazy" title="Live forex market hours"></iframe>
<p><a href="https://economicium.com/forex-market-hours/">Live forex market hours by Economicium</a></p>The credit line under the iframe is optional; keep it if you find the widget useful. Resize via the height attribute.
Method and limitations
Session windows are the conventional hours the forex industry uses to describe when each financial center's trading activity concentrates, not a regulated open and close - forex has no central exchange or regulator setting hours the way a stock exchange does. Open/closed status and every UTC time on this page are computed from those windows using each city's own timezone, including daylight saving, so the numbers stay correct as clocks change; nothing is hardcoded to a specific date.
Data sources
- Conventional forex session hours · Sydney, Tokyo, London and New York, as commonly quoted across the industry
This tool runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is sent to us or stored.
For general information and education only. This is not financial advice and not a recommendation to buy or sell anything. This tool is provided as is, with no warranty of accuracy: like any software it can contain errors, so always verify figures against your broker or the original source before acting on them. Trading and investing carry risk, including the risk of losing more than your initial outlay.
Spotted an error? Email [email protected] and it will be corrected. Maintained by Joey van Diest.