Home Market hours SAST
Forex market hours in SAST
Every session time on this page is shown in South African Standard Time (UTC+2, all year).
Reading your clock…
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Today, in your timezone
- Sydney
- Tokyo
- London
- New York
Sessions in SAST
| Session | Status | Your time | Countdown |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sydney08:00 – 17:00 Sydney | — | — | — |
| Tokyo09:00 – 18:00 Tokyo | — | — | — |
| London08:00 – 17:00 London | — | — | — |
| New York08:00 – 17:00 New York | — | — | — |
| London – New York overlapthe busiest window of the day | — | — | — |
Candle close and rollover
Triple swap tonight. The close that ends the Wednesday session carries three days of swap, because the spot value date rolls over the weekend. A position you would happily hold through any other rollover costs — or pays — three times as much through this one.
The market is shut for the weekend, so no candle is forming. Trading resumes in —.
The clock needs JavaScript and runs entirely in this tab. Your timezone is read from the browser with the standard internationalisation API — nothing is sent anywhere.
What SAST is, and what it does to your session times
SAST is UTC+2 all year. South Africa has never observed daylight saving, so your clock is the fixed point and every other session moves against it twice a year.
The SAST trading day, week and year
A South African trader has a clock that never moves, so every change in the tables above belongs to someone else. The daily candle closes at midnight SAST from early November to early March and at 23:00 SAST for the rest of the year; in 2026 the switch to 23:00 happened on 8 March and the return to midnight comes on 1 November. London opens at 10:00 SAST in the European winter and at 09:00 SAST from 29 March to 25 October 2026.
Because America and Europe change their clocks on different weekends, there are four weeks a year when the London open and the candle close sit an hour closer together than usual: in 2026, from 8 to 29 March and from 25 October to 1 November, London still opens at 10:00 while the candle already closes at 23:00.
The JSE trades continuously from 09:00 to 16:50 SAST, with an opening auction from 08:30 and a closing auction to 17:00, and since neither the exchange nor your clock observes daylight saving, those times hold all year. In the European summer the JSE opens at the same moment as London; in the European winter it has the first hour to itself. New York follows at 15:00 SAST in the northern winter and 14:00 in the northern summer, so the London and New York overlap runs from mid-afternoon into the early evening in Johannesburg.
The JSE closes for South African public holidays that the currency market ignores. In 2026 that includes Heritage Day on 24 September and the Day of Reconciliation on 16 December, and the exchange closes at noon on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. The rand keeps trading against the dollar and the euro on all of those days; what disappears is local equity liquidity.
A Johannesburg office day from 09:00 to 17:00 takes in three sessions: the last two hours of Tokyo, which closes at 11:00 SAST, all of London from its open, and New York from 15:00 in the northern winter or 14:00 in the northern summer. The forex week shuts at midnight on Friday night from November to early March and at 23:00 on Friday for the rest of the year, and reopens at the same hour on Sunday night, so the first thin hour of the week is a late-Sunday event for a South African trader.
Session times in SAST
| Session | SAST, northern winter | SAST, northern summer | Moves? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sydney 08:00 – 17:00 Sydney | 23:00 – 08:00 | 00:00 – 09:00 | Yes |
| Tokyo 09:00 – 18:00 Tokyo | 02:00 – 11:00 | 02:00 – 11:00 | No |
| London 08:00 – 17:00 London | 10:00 – 19:00 | 09:00 – 18:00 | Yes |
| New York 08:00 – 17:00 New York | 15:00 – 00:00 | 14:00 – 23:00 | Yes |
| London – New York overlap the busiest window of the day | 15:00 – 19:00 | 14:00 – 18:00 | Length changes too |
| Daily candle close 17:00 New York, where swap is charged | 00:00 | 23:00 | Yes |
Exchange hours in SAST
| Exchange | SAST, winter | SAST, summer | Local hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| JSE | 09:00 – 16:50 | 09:00 – 16:50 | 09:00 – 16:50 Johannesburg |
| NYSE | 16:30 – 23:00 | 15:30 – 22:00 | 09:30 – 16:00 New York |
| LSE | 10:00 – 18:30 | 09:00 – 17:30 | 08:00 – 16:30 London |
The week's fixed events in SAST
On a South African clock the European and American fixed points all land inside the working day or the evening after it. The Bank of England's decision is 14:00 in January and 13:00 in July, the US jobs report 15:30 or 14:30, and the London fix 18:00 or 17:00, so a trader here meets all three before switching off. The Federal Reserve comes last, at 21:00 or 20:00. The Asian and Australian releases are the ones that land while South Africa sleeps: the Tankan at 01:50 all year and Australian data at 02:30 or 03:30.
| Event | SAST, January | SAST, July |
|---|---|---|
| Australian data, 11:30 Canberra | 02:30 | 03:30 |
| Reserve Bank of Australia decision, 2.30 pm Sydney | 05:30 | 06:30 |
| Bank of Japan Tankan, 8:50 Tokyo | 01:50 | 01:50 |
| Bank of England decision, midday London | 14:00 | 13:00 |
| US jobs report, 8:30 New York | 15:30 | 14:30 |
| WM/Reuters closing rates, 16:00 London | 18:00 | 17:00 |
| Federal Reserve statement, 2:00 pm New York | 21:00 | 20:00 |
Every other clock
Your record already knows which session pays
A session table tells you when the market moves. Your own statement tells you when you make money, which is a different and far more useful question. Drop the MT4 or MT5 file on the page — win rate, expectancy and net P&L split by session, in about three seconds, and the file never leaves your device.
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