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Time in South Sudan — regions, cities and time zones

South Sudan uses Central Africa Time, UTC+2, with no daylight saving. Juba, the capital, shares that offset with the whole country. The territory has one time zone, and the clock reads the same in every state.

Flag of South Sudan South Sudan

Capital Juba · Africa · ISO SS / SSD

Juba, South Sudan

Friday, 4 September 2026

UTC+2 · Africa/Juba

Time and sun data for Juba, South Sudan

The sun in Juba

Sunrise 05:48 Solar noon 11:54 Sunset 18:00 Daylight 12 h 12 min Night 11 h 48 min Civil twilight 05:27 – 18:21

States and regions (44)

Current time in Juba

South Sudan uses Central Africa Time, UTC+2, with no daylight saving. Juba, the capital, shares that offset with the whole country. The territory has one time zone, and the clock reads the same in every state.

A note worth knowing before you convert anything

South Sudan is one of the countries whose offset has changed within living memory: it moved from UTC+3 to UTC+2, and older references, printed guides and stale software still show the earlier value. If you are converting a historical timestamp, or if a system tells you Juba is on UTC+3, the discrepancy is almost certainly a stale time zone database rather than a genuine difference.

The IANA identifier is Africa/Juba. Using it — rather than a hard-coded offset — is what makes past dates convert correctly, because the identifier records when the change happened and the bare number does not.

A country that has changed its offset teaches the lesson the hard way: an offset is a fact about a moment, not a permanent property of a place.

Neighbours, and where the clock changes

South Sudan is landlocked and borders several countries, and it does not share its offset with all of them: Same clock as Sudan to the north, and as Central Africa Time countries including Chad and the Democratic Republic of the Congo's eastern regions.

One hour behind Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia, which use UTC+3 — a real change to note when crossing the eastern and southern borders. Same offset as Central European Summer Time, so for much of the European summer South Sudan and Central Europe read the same clock.

One hour ahead of Central Europe in the European winter. Seven hours ahead of New York in the northern winter, six in the northern summer. The gap with Kenya and Uganda matters practically, since a good deal of trade, road freight and air travel runs that way. An hour is easy to lose when a schedule is quoted without a zone.

Daylight saving and the tropical day

South Sudan does not observe daylight saving time and has no reason to. The country lies in the tropics, north of the equator but not far from it, so day length varies only modestly through the year — there is no dark winter afternoon that shifting the clock would fix. Sunrise and sunset stay within a fairly narrow band of clock times in every season.

What does vary is the weather rather than the light: the year is structured around wet and dry seasons rather than around daylight. Travel planning in South Sudan is far more sensitive to rainfall than to the position of the sun.

Practical rules

Write the offset. "09:00 CAT (UTC+2)" is unambiguous. "09:00 CAT" alone risks being read as the older UTC+3 by anyone working from memory. Update your time zone data. Any device or library carrying an outdated tzdata will place Juba an hour off. This is the single most common source of error with South Sudanese time.

Use Africa/Juba in software, and store instants in UTC. Confirm the zone on cross-border schedules with Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia, where the hour genuinely differs. Business and government hours in Juba run through the morning and early afternoon, which gives a workable overlap with Europe for most of the day and with the Gulf and East Africa throughout.

Questions and answers
Is South Sudan on UTC+2 or UTC+3?
UTC+2. The country previously used UTC+3, and outdated sources or unpatched software may still report the older value.
Does South Sudan observe daylight saving?
No. The offset is fixed year-round, with no seasonal change.
Is Juba the same time as Nairobi?
No. Nairobi is on UTC+3, one hour ahead of Juba.

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