ISO 8601 date and time
The international standard for writing dates and times, like 2026-10-21T14:30:00Z. Here's the current time in every common ISO 8601 form, and a converter.
Right now
Convert an ISO 8601 string or Unix timestamp
Reading ISO 8601
2026-10-21: year, month, day, always in that order.T14:30:00: the time, in 24-hour format.Zmeans UTC (Zulu time);-04:00means four hours behind UTC.2026-W43-3: ISO week 43, day 3 (Wednesday). Weeks start on Monday.2026-294: the 294th day of 2026 (ordinal date).
More converters: minutes to decimal · decimal hours to time · seconds converter · hours to minutes · day of the year · ISO 8601 · Unix timestamp · Julian date · sidereal time
Questions people ask
What is ISO 8601?
An international standard (from the International Organization for Standardization) for writing dates and times so they can't be misread: year-month-day, 24-hour time, and a UTC offset.
What does the Z mean in a timestamp?
Z stands for Zulu time, which is UTC. 2026-10-21T14:30:00Z is 2:30 PM UTC.
Why use year-month-day?
It sorts correctly as text and avoids the US/European confusion over 03/04 (March 4 or April 3).