Asia/Kuching time zone
8:55PMUTC+8
UTC+8UTC+8+13 h vs New York (you)
No transitions: Asia/Kuching stays on UTC+8.
About Asia/Kuching
Asia/Kuching is the IANA time zone for Sabah, Sarawak in Malaysia and Brunei. It currently keeps UTC+8 all year.
The zone serves 2 countries or territories because their clocks have agreed since 1970; tzdata lists them together in zone1970.tab. That says nothing about borders or sovereignty, as the file’s header points out.
Its principal location is Kuching at 1.55° N, 110.33° E.
Rule for future years (POSIX TZ string)
<+08>-8
The standard time is called “+08” (a numeric abbreviation) and is UTC+8. POSIX writes the offset with the opposite sign (west of Greenwich is positive), which is why the string says "-8". 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 Asia/Kuching since 1970
The record starts with local mean time (UTC+7:21), which ended on February 28, 1926. The first daylight saving time in the record is in 1935.
| Years | Clocks | Abbreviations |
|---|---|---|
| 1970 onward | UTC+8 all year | — |
Before 1970
18 offset changes before 1970 in the record:
- Sunday, February 28, 1926: UTC+7:21 → UTC+7:30
- Sunday, January 1, 1933: UTC+7:30 → UTC+8
- Saturday, September 14, 1935: UTC+8 → UTC+8:20, daylight saving time
- Saturday, December 14, 1935: UTC+8:20 → UTC+8
- Monday, September 14, 1936: UTC+8 → UTC+8:20, daylight saving time
- Monday, December 14, 1936: UTC+8:20 → UTC+8
- Tuesday, September 14, 1937: UTC+8 → UTC+8:20, daylight saving time
- Tuesday, December 14, 1937: UTC+8:20 → UTC+8
- Wednesday, September 14, 1938: UTC+8 → UTC+8:20, daylight saving time
- Wednesday, December 14, 1938: UTC+8:20 → UTC+8
- Thursday, September 14, 1939: UTC+8 → UTC+8:20, daylight saving time
- Thursday, December 14, 1939: UTC+8:20 → UTC+8
- Saturday, September 14, 1940: UTC+8 → UTC+8:20, daylight saving time
- Saturday, December 14, 1940: UTC+8:20 → UTC+8
- Sunday, September 14, 1941: UTC+8 → UTC+8:20, daylight saving time
- Sunday, December 14, 1941: UTC+8:20 → UTC+8
- Monday, February 16, 1942: UTC+8 → UTC+9
- Wednesday, September 12, 1945: UTC+9 → UTC+8
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
These older or country-specific IDs are links to Asia/Kuching in tzdata. Their pages redirect here: Asia/Brunei.
Other zones that keep exactly the same time under the current rules (but have a different history): Antarctica/Casey, Asia/Hong_Kong, Asia/Irkutsk, Asia/Macau, Asia/Makassar, Asia/Manila, Asia/Shanghai, Asia/Singapore, Asia/Taipei, Asia/Ulaanbaatar, Australia/Perth.
Places on Asia/Kuching
Convert Kuching time
Using Asia/Kuching 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: 'Asia/Kuching' })
# Python 3.9+
from zoneinfo import ZoneInfo
from datetime import datetime
datetime.now(ZoneInfo('Asia/Kuching'))
// Java
java.time.ZonedDateTime.now(java.time.ZoneId.of("Asia/Kuching"))
// Go
loc, _ := time.LoadLocation("Asia/Kuching")
time.Now().In(loc)
-- PostgreSQL
SELECT now() AT TIME ZONE 'Asia/Kuching';
# Shell
TZ='Asia/Kuching' 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.