Best Meeting Times Between US and UK Teams (2026): GMT/BST to EST, CST, and PST Overlap Guide
London to New York is five hours apart, except for the five weeks a year when it isn't. Exact overlap windows for every US zone, the 2026 DST mismatch dates, and where to put the recurring sync. -
US and UK teams have it easy by global standards. London to New York is five hours, there's a genuine multi-hour overlap on every US coast, and nobody has to take a 9 PM call. The gap in most people's setup isn't finding a window; it's not knowing about the five weeks a year when the window silently moves.
The short answer
- London + New York: 1:00 to 6:00 PM London = 8:00 AM to 1:00 PM New York. Five full hours. Anchor: 3:00 PM London = 10:00 AM New York.
- London + Chicago: 2:00 to 6:00 PM London = 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM Chicago. Anchor: 4:00 PM London = 10:00 AM Chicago.
- London + Denver: 3:00 to 6:00 PM London = 8:00 to 11:00 AM Denver.
- London + San Francisco: 4:00 to 6:00 PM London = 8:00 to 10:00 AM San Francisco. Two hours, and that's it. Anchor: 5:00 PM London = 9:00 AM San Francisco.
The pattern across all four: UK afternoon, US morning. There is no other window, so the etiquette question isn't when to meet, it's who absorbs the edges. London taking 5 PM meetings and San Francisco taking 8 AM ones is the deal; neither side gets to schedule in its own mid-morning comfort zone and call it collaboration.
The time difference, quickly
| US zone | Gap from UK (most of the year) |
|---|---|
| Eastern | UK is 5 hours ahead |
| Central | UK is 6 hours ahead |
| Mountain | UK is 7 hours ahead |
| Pacific | UK is 8 hours ahead |
Conversions people search for constantly:
- 9 AM EST to UK: 2:00 PM London.
- 9 AM PST to UK: 5:00 PM London.
- 2 PM GMT to EST: 9:00 AM New York.
- 5 PM BST to PST: 9:00 AM San Francisco.
Those hold for roughly 47 weeks of the year. The other five are the interesting part.
The five weird weeks
The US and UK both observe daylight saving but change on different dates. The US moves on the second Sunday of March and the first Sunday of November; the UK moves on the last Sunday of March and October. In the mismatch windows the gap shrinks by an hour.
For 2026:
- March 8 to March 29: US has sprung forward, UK hasn't. London to New York is 4 hours, not 5. Your 3 PM London / 10 AM New York meeting is suddenly 3 PM / 11 AM.
- October 25 to November 1: UK has fallen back, US hasn't. Same shrink: 4 hours for one week.
Every recurring US/UK meeting gets pulled an hour off course during those windows, for exactly the people who didn't cause it. The fix is boring and works: put both date ranges in a recurring calendar reminder for whoever owns the team calendar, and state the anchor zone in every recurring invite ("this series is anchored to 10:00 AM New York"). Then when the drift happens, it's expected instead of a surprise.
Which anchor zone should the meeting follow?
Pick the side with more attendees, and write it down. But two second-order effects are worth knowing:
- Anchored to the US: during the March mismatch, the meeting moves an hour later in London (3 PM becomes 4 PM). Harmless.
- Anchored to the UK: during the same weeks it moves an hour earlier in the US. An 8 AM San Francisco call becomes 7 AM, which is how DST mismatches end up on burnout retros.
If you have West Coast attendees near the early edge of the window, anchor to the US side. The London late-afternoon slot has more give than the San Francisco early-morning one.
Making the narrow Pacific window work
Two hours a day of London to San Francisco overlap disappears fast once a daily standup and a couple of recurring syncs move in. Three rules keep it usable:
- Reserve the window for things that need to be live. Decisions, unblocking, anything with back-and-forth. Status updates go async in writing; see the async handoff.
- Alternate the pain for one-offs. Occasional 7 AM San Francisco or 7 PM London calls are fine if they alternate. Track whose turn it was.
- Use the East Coast as a relay when you have one. New York overlaps five hours with London and three with San Francisco, and a colleague who can hand context across both windows in the same day removes half the reasons a three-zone call needed to exist.
Common questions
Does Ireland follow the UK's clock? Yes, Dublin matches London year-round, including the change dates. Everything above applies unchanged.
What about UK plus Central Europe plus the US? Paris, Berlin, and Amsterdam sit one hour ahead of London and change clocks on the same dates, so a three-way window exists: 3:00 PM London = 4:00 PM Berlin = 10:00 AM New York works for everyone. Pacific plus Central Europe is where it gets thin: 5:00 PM Berlin = 8:00 AM San Francisco, and that's the whole window.
Is a daily standup between London and the West Coast reasonable? It fits, exactly, at 4:30 to 5 PM London / 8:30 to 9 AM San Francisco. Whether it's reasonable is a different question: that's the London team's end of day, when energy for planning discussion is lowest. Consider a written standup with one live sync mid-week.
Half our UK team is actually in Manchester and Edinburgh, does anything change? No, the whole UK is one time zone. The person in Edinburgh has the same clock as London and stronger opinions about being called a Londoner.
Where to go next
- London and New York overlap, live
- London and San Francisco overlap, live
- Best meeting times between US and India teams
- Best meeting times between US and Australia teams
- Core hours for global teams
TL;DR
- London is 5 hours ahead of New York and 8 ahead of San Francisco for ~47 weeks of the year.
- The window is always UK afternoon / US morning: 5 hours with New York, 2 with San Francisco.
- In 2026, the gap shrinks by an hour from Mar 8 to 29 and Oct 25 to Nov 1. Put both in a reminder.
- State the anchor zone in every recurring invite; prefer a US anchor when West Coast attendees sit near the 8 AM edge.
- A live Timezoners board shows the real window, including during the mismatch weeks, without anyone doing arithmetic.