Time in Norway — regions, cities and time zones

Current time in Oslo

Mainland Norway uses Central European Time, UTC+01:00, moving to Central European Summer Time, UTC+02:00, from late March to late October. Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim and Tromsø all share this single zone despite the country's great length.

One zone stretched a very long way

Norway runs roughly 1,750 kilometres from the Skagerrak in the south to the Barents Sea in the north, and it keeps one clock for the entire distance. That works because the country's extent is mostly north to south rather than east to west — longitude, not latitude, is what a time zone is really about.

The consequence is that the clock says the same thing in Kristiansand and in Kirkenes while the sky says something entirely different. In midwinter the far north has no sunrise at all; in midsummer the sun does not set. No arrangement of time zones could smooth that out, which is part of why Norway has never tried.

Norway solved the problem of long summer evenings by having the sun simply refuse to leave. Daylight saving is a modest gesture by comparison.

Zone facts

Standard time: Central European Time, UTC+01:00 Summer time: Central European Summer Time, UTC+02:00 Switch dates: last Sunday in March forward, last Sunday in October back IANA zone identifier: Europe/Oslo Svalbard: Arctic/Longyearbyen, same offset as the mainland

Svalbard and Jan Mayen

Norway's Arctic dependencies keep the mainland's clock. Svalbard, far north of the mainland, has its own IANA identifier — Arctic/Longyearbyen — but the same offset and the same daylight saving rules as Oslo. Jan Mayen, in the Norwegian Sea, is likewise aligned with the mainland.

Svalbard is the extreme case of the mismatch between clock and sky. Longyearbyen has months of continuous darkness and months of continuous daylight, and the twice-yearly clock change happens there exactly as it does in Oslo, whether or not the sun is participating.

Counties and the working day

Norway is divided into counties, and none of them affects the time. The main population centres and their positions: Oslo in the south-east, the capital and largest city. Bergen on the west coast, the gateway to the fjords.

Stavanger in the south-west, the centre of the offshore energy industry. Trondheim in the middle of the country. Tromsø and Bodø in the north, above the Arctic Circle. The east-west spread from the North Sea coast to the Finnish border is enough that actual solar noon differs by a noticeable margin between the far west and the far north-east — but not enough that anyone has seriously proposed splitting the zone.

Neighbours and offsets

Sweden and Denmark share Norway's zone and its switch dates exactly, so within Scandinavia there is no time difference to manage at all. Finland is one hour ahead on Eastern European Time, which matters at the northern border where Norway, Finland and Russia meet within a short distance of one another. The United Kingdom is one hour behind, in both winter and summer, since it follows the same last-Sunday switch pattern.