GMT-1 Time Zone Countries list - UTC-1 Time Now

UTC−1 time now

Take the UTC clock and remove an hour. This is the narrowest of the western offsets in terms of habitation, and the shift is small enough that people working with UTC−1 often think in UTC and adjust at the last moment.

Islands on this offset

The land using UTC−1 amounts to two archipelagos and the surrounding water. Cape Verde — Praia, Mindelo and the rest of the islands, on UTC−1 all year with no clock changes. The Azores — Ponta Delgada, Angra do Heroísmo and Horta, on UTC−1 as standard time and UTC+0 in summer.

Nautical zone N — the Atlantic band between 7.5°W and 22.5°W, used by vessels keeping ship's time. Greenland's Ittoqqortoormiit area also used this offset historically before regional adjustments; today the offset's civilian life is essentially Cape Verdean and Azorean.

Daylight saving: a split decision

The two inhabited groups on UTC−1 have made opposite choices, and the difference matters if you deal with both. Cape Verde keeps a fixed offset. There is no summer time, no spring change, no autumn change. The country sits close enough to the equator that the swing in daylight through the year is modest, and the clocks reflect that.

The Azores, as part of Portugal, follow the European Union schedule. They move to UTC+0 for the summer and return to UTC−1 for the winter, changing on the same dates as mainland Portugal but always sitting one hour behind Lisbon.

So for roughly half the year the Azores and Cape Verde share a clock, and for the other half they are an hour apart — without either of them having done anything unusual. Two island groups in the same ocean, on the same offset, disagreeing about summer: proof that a time zone is a decision, not a measurement.

Practical conversions

Most work involving UTC−1 is with Europe or West Africa, and the arithmetic is short: UTC to UTC−1: subtract one hour. Lisbon to the Azores: subtract one hour, year-round, in both seasons. London on GMT to Cape Verde: subtract one hour. On British Summer Time, subtract two.

Dakar (UTC+0) to Praia: subtract one hour. The Cape Verde case is the one to write down, because it is the one that changes without anyone on the island touching a clock. A recurring call with Praia that works in January will be an hour off in July if it was fixed against a European local time.