What is UTC (Coordinated Universal Time)?
UTC is the world’s primary time standard, kept by atomic clocks. Every time zone, including UK time, is defined as an offset from UTC.
What is Coordinated Universal Time?
Direct answer. UTC is the global reference time from which all clocks and time zones are set. It does not observe daylight saving and never changes with the seasons.
Time zones are expressed as offsets from UTC: the UK is UTC+0 in winter (GMT) and UTC+1 in summer (BST); New York is UTC−5 or UTC−4; India is UTC+5:30. UTC is maintained by atomic clocks and is, for practical purposes, identical to GMT.
Key fact: UTC never changes for daylight saving. UK time is UTC+0 in winter and UTC+1 in summer.
FAQ
What does UTC stand for?
Coordinated Universal Time. The abbreviation is a compromise between the English (CUT) and French (TUC) word orders, so it was standardised as UTC.
Is UTC a time zone?
Not exactly — UTC is the global time standard that all time zones are defined against. A zone is described as UTC plus or minus a number of hours (for example, BST is UTC+1).