Countdown to a date: days, hours, minutes and seconds until (or since) a date and time in any time zone, ticking live and allowing for clock changes.
By AdminDrafted with AI writing toolsUpdated Checked examples: 4
The target, set for 09:00 on Sat 12 Dec 2026 in UTC, is 29 days, 14 hours, 43 minutes and 3 seconds away.
09:00 on Sat 12 Dec 2026 in UTC is UTC+00:00, which is 2026-12-12T09:00:00Z.
UTC offsets, including daylight-saving changes, come from the IANA time zone database built into your browser.
Both instants are seconds since 1970-01-01T00:00Z.
The target date and time is turned into a single instant using its time zone's UTC offset on that day, taken from the IANA time zone database, so daylight-saving changes are included. The current time is subtracted from it and the gap in seconds is split into days of 86,400 seconds, then hours, minutes and seconds. The display updates every second, and once the target has passed it counts the time since.
People count down to launches, exams, flights, holidays and deadlines set in another country. From noon UTC on 15 January 2026 to midnight UTC on 1 February 2026 is 16 days and 12 hours, or 1,425,600 seconds.
On the day clocks go forward some clock times never happen: 02:30 on 8 March 2026 in New York is read as 03:30, the time it would be after the jump. On the day clocks go back an hour happens twice, and the advanced option picks the first or second occurrence.
A countdown subtracts the current moment from the target moment and splits the gap into whole days of 24 hours, then hours, minutes and seconds. At 18:00 on 20 December 2026, midnight at the start of Christmas Day is 4 days 6 hours away, even though 25 December is 5 calendar days after 20 December.
Set the target in the time zone where the event happens: midnight in Tokyo and midnight in London are different moments.
Measured from noon UTC on 15 January 2026:
| Target | Target zone | Direction at the reference instant | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 February 2026, 00:00 | UTC | Until the target | 16 days 12 hours |
| 15 January 2026, 12:00 | UTC | Now | 0 seconds |
| 15 January 2026, 13:00 | UTC | Until the target | 1 hour |
| 14 January 2026, 12:00 | UTC | Since the target | 1 day |
| 1 January 2026, 00:00 | Tokyo | Since the target | 14 days 21 hours |
A target in the past counts the time since it. Midnight on 1 January 2026 in Tokyo was 15:00 UTC on 31 December 2025, so by noon UTC on 15 January it was 14 days 21 hours ago.
Countdown days are complete 24-hour blocks from the current moment; the hours, minutes and seconds are what is left over. Total hours count the whole gap, so 1 day and 1 hour is 25 total hours.
Calendar days count dates instead. From noon on 15 January to midnight at the start of 1 February is 16 days 12 hours, while 1 February is 17 calendar days after 15 January. To count dates, use the date difference calculator.
A clock change shortens or lengthens the count. In New York, noon on 7 March 2026 to noon on 9 March is 1 day 23 hours, because 8 March has only 23 hours there.
On the day clocks go forward, some local times never happen, and a target at one of them moves forward by the size of the jump. On the day clocks go back, one hour happens twice, and the countdown uses the occurrence you pick. These are the rules of the Temporal ZonedDateTime documentation.
The current moment comes from your device's clock, so two devices whose clocks disagree show different counts for the same target.
The count is in whole seconds with every day 86,400 seconds long, so leap seconds are ignored, and after the target passes it keeps counting the time since rather than moving to next year.
For a target given as an epoch number, use the Unix timestamp converter. To compare clocks in several cities, use the time zone converter, and to add up durations you already know, the time calculator.
Checked against: Independent calculation
Checked against: minus 2026-01-15T12:00Z = 4,474,800 s
Checked against: minus now = 4,476,600 s
Checked against: Independent calculation
Christmas Day, 25 December, is day 359 of a common year and day 360 of a leap year, so subtract today's day of the year from that number. From 1 January 2026 it is 358 days and from 1 December it is 24 days. Set the target to 25 December at 00:00 in your own time zone to see the live count down to the second.
Yes. The target's UTC offset comes from the IANA database for that exact date. In 2026 clocks in US regions that observe daylight saving time go forward at 2:00 a.m. on 8 March and back on 1 November, and EU clocks change at 01:00 UTC on 29 March and 25 October. A countdown that spans one of these changes is an hour shorter or longer than the number of days times 24.
Pick the time zone the event is announced in, not your own. Midnight on 1 January 2026 in Tokyo, which is UTC+9, was 15:00 UTC on 31 December 2025, nine hours before midnight in London. The "Target in UTC" result shows the instant being counted to, so you can compare it with a time given in UTC or GMT.
A day has 86,400 seconds (24 × 60 × 60), a week 604,800 and 30 days 2,592,000. The countdown counts every day as 86,400 seconds, the same convention as POSIX (Unix) time, which leaves leap seconds out. Total hours are shown to two decimals, so 16 days and 12 hours reads as 396.00 hours.
This calculator includes 4 worked examples with independently sourced answers. They run in the test suite, and you can run them here too.