Time in Palau — regions, cities and time zones

Current time in Ngerulmud

Palau uses a single time zone at UTC+09:00, with no daylight saving. Ngerulmud, the capital on the island of Babeldaob, shares this offset with Koror and every other island in the archipelago, all year round.

The smallest capital on a nine-hour clock

Ngerulmud sits on Babeldaob, Palau's largest island, and is one of the least populated national capitals anywhere. The government moved there from Koror, which remains the country's commercial centre and largest town. Both keep the same clock, along with Peleliu, Angaur, Kayangel and the remote Southwest Islands.

At UTC+09:00, Palau shares its offset with Japan, South Korea and North Korea — a reflection of the western Pacific position rather than any political arrangement. Palau lies east of the Philippines and north of Indonesia's easternmost islands, well out in the open ocean.

A capital with a few hundred residents keeps the same time zone as Tokyo. Time zones measure longitude, not importance.

Zone details

Standard time: UTC+09:00 Daylight saving: not observed IANA zone identifier: Pacific/Palau Capital: Ngerulmud, on Babeldaob Largest town: Koror

States of the archipelago

Palau is divided into sixteen states, an unusually fine-grained arrangement for a country of its size. All share one clock. The more populous among them include: Melekeok, the state containing the capital Ngerulmud.

Koror, holding most of the population and the main harbour. Airai, on southern Babeldaob, where the international airport is. Peleliu and Angaur, to the south of the main group. Kayangel, the northernmost inhabited atoll.

Hatohobei and Sonsorol, the Southwest Islands, several hundred kilometres from the main archipelago. The Southwest Islands are the outlier geographically, lying far to the south-west of Koror. Even so, they use the national time. The distance would justify no more than a minor adjustment in solar terms, and administratively a second zone for a handful of residents would create far more trouble than it solved.

Equatorial daylight, unchanging

Palau lies at around 7 degrees north, close enough to the equator that day length is nearly constant. Sunrise and sunset shift by only a small margin between June and December. This is the clearest possible case against daylight saving: there is no seasonal surplus of evening light to be redistributed, because there is barely a season at all in terms of daylight.

What does vary is weather rather than light — the wetter and drier parts of the year — and no clock adjustment has ever been proposed to address that.

Scheduling from Palau

Palau's fixed UTC+09:00 makes it straightforward to work with East Asia: Tokyo and Seoul are exact matches, and Taipei, Manila and Hong Kong are one hour behind at UTC+08:00. Guam and the Northern Marianas are one hour ahead. Australia's eastern seaboard is an hour ahead in winter and two in the southern summer, since Australia moves its clocks and Palau does not.

Toward the Americas, the gap is large enough that same-day contact means one side working outside normal hours — the standard condition of the western Pacific.