Time zone · Asia
CST
Taipei Standard Time
Taipei Standard Time (CST) keeps things simple across Taiwan with a steady UTC+08:00 year-round—no daylight saving adjustments to worry about. Whether you're scheduling meetings across Asia-Pacific or catching a late-night Taipei street-food run, the clock stays predictable and easy to live with.
Saturday, June 6, 2026
Current offset
UTC+08:00
Standard · CST
Daylight saving
Not observed
Year-round standard time
IANA zones
1
None observe daylight saving
DST offset
—
No summer variant
About CST
A fixed, year-round offset.
Taipei Standard Time (CST) keeps things simple across Taiwan with a steady UTC+08:00 year-round—no daylight saving adjustments to worry about. Whether you're scheduling meetings across Asia-Pacific or catching a late-night Taipei street-food run, the clock stays predictable and easy to live with.
IANA zones · the technical identifiers
The zone that resolve to CST.
For software, always store the IANA identifier — never the abbreviation alone. The database keeps these zones distinct because their rules can, and historically did, diverge.
Cities currently on CST
The same hour, city by city.
6 cities · all UTC+08:00
Where CST is used
One country.
Same offset · UTC+08:00
Other zones at UTC+08:00 right now.
These named zones share CST's offset today. When daylight saving rules differ, they drift apart for part of the year.
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about CST, daylight saving, and how to handle it in software. Can't find what you need? Email [email protected].
- Does Taiwan observe daylight saving time?
- No. Taiwan permanently discontinued daylight saving in 1979, and Taipei Standard Time now stays fixed at UTC+08:00 all year long.
- Why did Taiwan stop using daylight saving?
- Authorities found that the energy savings from shifting clocks were negligible for a subtropical island near the Tropic of Cancer, where day length barely changes throughout the year.
- Which regions share CST with Taipei?
- The abbreviation CST is notoriously ambiguous—it also refers to Central Standard Time in North America (UTC−06:00) and China Standard Time (UTC+08:00). Only the Taipei Standard Time entry on timezone.io covers the Asia/Taipei zone.
- How does Taiwan's time compare to Hong Kong and Shanghai?
- All three—Taipei, Hong Kong, and mainland China's Beijing Time—run UTC+08:00 permanently without DST, making real-time collaboration across those hubs effortless.
- When did CST become permanent in Taiwan?
- After a final daylight-saving cycle in 1979, Taiwan fixed the clock on September 30, 1979, and has not changed it since.
- What does a no-DST timezone mean for travelers?
- Visiting Taipei means one less thing to track: you won't experience the spring-forward or fall-back confusion, and flight connections to neighboring Asia cities don't involve offset surprises either.
- Is Taiwan unique in its part of Asia for not using DST?
- It's in good company—Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the Philippines, and most Southeast Asian nations also stay on a fixed offset year-round.
Free · Developer API
Time, as JSON.
Every IANA time zone with live offsets, DST status, and the countries and cities that use them — clean, dependable JSON. Sign up free and get an API key in seconds.
countries, cities, convert, DST transitions coming next.
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