Countries With More Than One Time Zone

About 25 countries use more than one time zone. The number a country spans depends on two things: how far it stretches east to west, and whether it has overseas territories. That is why France, which is not especially wide, tops the list.

The most time zones

1. France — 12 (13 in the northern summer). Metropolitan France uses one, but its territories run from French Polynesia in the Pacific to the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean.
2. United States — 11, counting Guam, American Samoa and the other Pacific and Caribbean territories along with the six zones of the 50 states.
3. Russia — 11, all within a single contiguous landmass spanning about 170 degrees of longitude.
4. United Kingdom — 9, almost entirely from its overseas territories, from the Pitcairn Islands to the Falklands.
5. Australia — 9, including its external territories; the mainland itself uses three, with some using half-hour offsets.
6. Canada — 6, from Newfoundland (on a half-hour offset) to the Pacific.
7. Denmark — 5, because of Greenland and the Faroe Islands.
8. New Zealand, Brazil, Mexico, Kiribati — each with 3 to 4.

The big countries that use just one

China spans five geographic time zones but has used a single one — Beijing time — since 1949, so the sun can rise after 10 a.m. in the far west. India uses one zone for a country wide enough to justify two, and adds a half-hour offset (UTC+5:30) as a compromise. Both choices are about national unity and administrative simplicity, at the cost of daylight lining up with the clock.

The half-hour and quarter-hour oddities

• India, Sri Lanka, Iran, Afghanistan, Myanmar and part of Australia use offsets of 30 or 45 minutes from the hour.
• Nepal is UTC+5:45 — one of only a handful of places on a 45-minute offset.
• The International Date Line bends sharply around Kiribati so the whole country can share one calendar day; its easternmost islands are UTC+14, the furthest ahead on Earth.