France uses Central European Time (CET, UTC+1) in winter and Central European Summer Time (CEST, UTC+2) in summer. IANA identifier: Europe/Paris.

Key facts about time in France

  • Timezone: Central European Time (CET) / Central European Summer Time (CEST)
  • UTC offset: UTC+1 (winter), UTC+2 (summer)
  • DST: Yes, last Sunday in March (spring forward) to last Sunday in October (fall back)
  • IANA identifier: Europe/Paris
  • Capital: Paris

France runs on Central European Time: UTC+1 in winter, UTC+2 in summer (CEST). DST follows the EU standard. Clocks change on the last Sunday in March and the last Sunday in October, as they do across most of Europe.

This covers metropolitan France. The full picture is considerably larger.

France and its extraordinary timezone count

Metropolitan France is UTC+1 (winter) and UTC+2 (summer). But France also governs overseas departments and territories spread across the globe. The Republic spans 12 distinct UTC offsets, more than any other country on earth. Including its claim in Antarctica, the total reaches 13.

Across all French territories, the IANA timezone database records 16 distinct zone identifiers:

TerritoryIANA ZoneUTC Offset
Metropolitan FranceEurope/Paris+01:00 / +02:00
MayotteIndian/Mayotte+03:00
RéunionIndian/Reunion+04:00
Kerguelen IslandsIndian/Kerguelen+05:00
Dumont d’Urville StationAntarctica/DumontDUrville+10:00
New CaledoniaPacific/Noumea+11:00
Wallis and FutunaPacific/Wallis+12:00
GuadeloupeAmerica/Guadeloupe-04:00
MartiniqueAmerica/Martinique-04:00
Saint BarthélemyAmerica/St_Barthelemy-04:00
Saint MartinAmerica/Marigot-04:00
French GuianaAmerica/Cayenne-03:00
Saint Pierre and MiquelonAmerica/Miquelon-03:00 / -02:00
Society Islands (French Polynesia)Pacific/Tahiti-10:00
Marquesas IslandsPacific/Marquesas-09:30
Gambier IslandsPacific/Gambier-09:00

The Marquesas offset of UTC-9:30 is one of only two half-hour-offset zones in the Western Hemisphere and one of the more unusual entries in the entire IANA database.

The French state is a planetary operation. The sun never fully sets on the French Republic.

Around the World in Eighty Days: the day that wasn’t lost

Jules Verne serialized “Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours” in the Paris newspaper “Le Temps” beginning November 6, 1872. The book edition appeared January 30, 1873.

Phileas Fogg bets his fellow members of the Reform Club in London twenty thousand pounds that he can circumnavigate the globe in 80 days. He and his valet Passepartout set off eastward: through France, through the Suez Canal, across India, through Hong Kong and Japan, across the Pacific, across the United States, back to London.

They return on what appears to be the 81st day. The bet seems lost.

Then the realization: because Fogg traveled continuously eastward, each day was shortened by four minutes for every degree of longitude crossed. Over eighty days of eastward travel, he and Passepartout witnessed 80 sunrises while London had seen only 79. They had gained a full day without recording it in Fogg’s journal.

He arrives back in London on the 80th day, not the 81st. The bet is won.

Verne wrote this novel twelve years before the International Meridian Conference of 1884 established the Prime Meridian at Greenwich and created the framework for global standard time. The novel appeared at the moment when educated readers were beginning to grapple seriously with what it meant for the earth to be round and for time to therefore be relative to longitude.

The International Date Line, which Verne did not yet have available as a named concept, is the mechanism that makes the Fogg twist work in reality. Cross it going east and you subtract a day; cross it going west and you add one. Fogg crossed the Pacific heading east, gaining a day in practice even though his diary did not record it.

Paris: the meridian that lost

Before Greenwich became the world’s reference meridian, France used the Paris Meridian, running through the Paris Observatory. King Louis XIV authorized the observatory’s construction in 1666; on Midsummer’s Day 1667, members of the Académie des Sciences traced its foundation on a site south of the city. Construction was completed in 1671. French cartographers mapped the world from this meridian for more than two centuries.

The International Meridian Conference of October 1884 in Washington, D.C. voted to establish Greenwich as the prime meridian. Twenty-two countries voted in favor. France abstained. For decades afterward, French charts used “Paris time” or “Greenwich time” depending on context, and France did not officially adopt Greenwich-based civil time in law until 1911.

The meridian line itself is traced on the floor of the Meridian Room, also called the Cassini Room, inside the Paris Observatory. Greenwich won, but Paris keeps the line.

The decimal time experiment

During the French Revolution, the new government attempted to decimalize everything, including time. The French Republican Calendar, adopted on October 24, 1793, reorganized the year into twelve months of thirty days each, with ten-day weeks and the year beginning at the autumnal equinox. Days were divided into ten decimal hours, each decimal hour into 100 decimal minutes, each decimal minute into 100 decimal seconds.

This made conversions mathematically elegant and daily life genuinely confusing. Ten-hour clocks were produced. Mandatory decimal time was suspended on April 7, 1795, primarily because no one wanted to replace all their watches. The Republican Calendar itself continued until Napoleon abolished it by act of September 9, 1805, returning France to the Gregorian calendar.

France’s experiment with decimal time remains a reminder that timekeeping is not purely rational. The accumulated inertia of millions of people’s habits is, in practice, more powerful than a government decree about what the clock should look like.

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