America/Cancun time zone
7:11AMEST
ESTUTC−5+0 h vs New York (you)
No transitions: America/Cancun stays on EST (UTC−5).
About America/Cancun
America/Cancun is the IANA time zone for Quintana Roo in Mexico. It currently keeps Eastern Standard Time (EST, UTC−5) all year.
Its principal location is Cancun at 21.08° N, 86.77° W.
Abbreviations in use: EST. Offset page: UTC−5.
Rule for future years (POSIX TZ string)
EST5
The standard time is called EST and is UTC−5. POSIX writes the offset with the opposite sign (west of Greenwich is positive), which is why the string says "5". There is no daylight saving rule: the zone stays on this offset for every year after the end of its explicit transitions. Software that has no full tzdata copy, such as many embedded devices, can use this string directly as the TZ environment variable.
History of America/Cancun since 1970
The record starts with local mean time (UTC−5:47), which ended on January 1, 1922. The first daylight saving time in the record is in 1996.
| Years | Clocks | Abbreviations |
|---|---|---|
| 1970–1980 | UTC−6 all year | CST |
| 1981 | UTC−6 until December 26, then UTC−5 | CST, EST |
| 1982 | UTC−5 all year | EST |
| 1983 | UTC−5 until January 4, then UTC−6 | EST, CST |
| 1984–1995 | UTC−6 all year | CST |
| 1996 | UTC−6 in winter, UTC−5 in summer | CST, CDT |
| 1997 | UTC−6 until April 6, then UTC−5 | CST, CDT, EST |
| 1998 | UTC−5 in winter, UTC−4 in summer; also UTC−6 for part of the year | EST, EDT, CDT, CST |
| 1999–2014 | UTC−6 in winter, UTC−5 in summer | CST, CDT |
| 2015 | UTC−6 until February 1, then UTC−5 | CST, EST |
| 2016 onward | UTC−5 all year | EST |
Before 1970
1 offset change before 1970 in the record:
- Sunday, January 1, 1922: UTC−5:47 → UTC−6 (CST)
Changes of the winter (standard) offset: Sunday, February 1, 2015, UTC−6 → UTC−5.
tzdata commits to accuracy from 1970 for every zone (zone1970.tab); earlier entries are historical research and may be incomplete.
Aliases and zones with the same clock
Other zones that keep exactly the same time under the current rules (but have a different history): America/Bogota, America/Eirunepe, America/Guayaquil, America/Jamaica, America/Lima, America/Panama, America/Rio_Branco, America/Winnipeg.
Convert Cancun time
Using America/Cancun in code
Every major platform reads the same IANA ID. Store instants in UTC and convert with the ID at display time; never store a fixed offset for a place that has daylight saving time.
// JavaScript
new Date().toLocaleString('en-US', { timeZone: 'America/Cancun' })
# Python 3.9+
from zoneinfo import ZoneInfo
from datetime import datetime
datetime.now(ZoneInfo('America/Cancun'))
// Java
java.time.ZonedDateTime.now(java.time.ZoneId.of("America/Cancun"))
// Go
loc, _ := time.LoadLocation("America/Cancun")
time.Now().In(loc)
-- PostgreSQL
SELECT now() AT TIME ZONE 'America/Cancun';
# Shell
TZ='America/Cancun' datePlatforms ship their own copy of tzdata and update it on their own schedule. After a rule change, outputs can differ until the platform updates; this page uses tzdata 2026f.