CST — Central Standard Time
US & Canada Central
Wednesday, 12th August 2026
What CST actually is
UTC-6 in winter, UTC-5 (CDT) in summer.
Careful: US & Canada Central is not on CST at the moment. It is currently CDT (UTC-5) because of daylight saving.
CST means 3 different things
This is the whole reason calendar software uses IANA identifiers instead of abbreviations. All of them, live:
US & Canada Central
UTC-6 in winter, UTC-5 (CDT) in summer.
Clocks go back 1 hour on Sunday, 1st November 2026, at 1:59 am local time (1:00 am after the change).
China Standard Time
UTC+8, all year, across the whole of China — one zone for a country five time zones wide.
Clocks here do not change — this zone stays on the same offset all year.
Cuba Standard Time
UTC-5 in winter, UTC-4 in summer — an hour ahead of US Central despite the shared abbreviation.
Clocks go back 1 hour on Sunday, 1st November 2026, at 12:59 am local time (12:00 am after the change).
Convert CST
Looking for UTC and GMT developer tooling — epoch conversion, ISO 8601, a free time API? That lives on our sibling site utctime.app.
Other abbreviations
Questions people ask
What time is it in CST right now?
6:20 pm (18:20) on Wednesday, 12th August 2026, for US & Canada Central. Careful: CST means 3 different things — the other meanings and their current times are listed below.
What does CST stand for?
Central Standard Time. UTC-6 in winter, UTC-5 (CDT) in summer.
What is the UTC offset of CST?
US & Canada Central: UTC-5; China Standard Time: UTC+8; Cuba Standard Time: UTC-4.
Why does CST mean more than one time zone?
Time-zone abbreviations were never standardised — several countries independently picked the same letters. CST is one of the worst offenders, with 3 meanings in current use. This is why calendar software and databases use IANA identifiers like America/Chicago instead: they are unique, and they carry the daylight-saving rules with them.