Europe/Minsk time zone
4:10PMUTC+3
UTC+3UTC+3+8 h vs New York (you)
No transitions: Europe/Minsk stays on UTC+3.
About Europe/Minsk
Europe/Minsk is the IANA time zone for Belarus. It currently keeps UTC+3 all year.
Its principal location is Minsk at 53.90° N, 27.57° E.
Rule for future years (POSIX TZ string)
<+03>-3
The standard time is called “+03” (a numeric abbreviation) and is UTC+3. POSIX writes the offset with the opposite sign (west of Greenwich is positive), which is why the string says "-3". 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 Europe/Minsk since 1970
The record starts with local mean time (UTC+1:50), which ended on December 31, 1879. The first daylight saving time in the record is in 1941.
| Years | Clocks | Abbreviations |
|---|---|---|
| 1970–1980 | UTC+3 all year | MSK |
| 1981–1989 | UTC+3 in winter, UTC+4 in summer | MSK, MSD |
| 1990 | UTC+3 all year | MSK |
| 1991 | UTC+3 until September 29, then UTC+2 | MSK, EEST, EET |
| 1992–2010 | UTC+2 in winter, UTC+3 in summer | EET, EEST |
| 2011 | UTC+2 until March 27, then UTC+3 | EET |
| 2012 onward | UTC+3 all year | — |
Before 1970
8 offset changes before 1970 in the record:
- Friday, May 2, 1924: UTC+1:50 → UTC+2 (EET)
- Saturday, June 21, 1930: UTC+2 → UTC+3 (MSK)
- Saturday, June 28, 1941: UTC+3 → UTC+2 (CEST), daylight saving time
- Monday, November 2, 1942: UTC+2 → UTC+1 (CET)
- Monday, March 29, 1943: UTC+1 → UTC+2 (CEST), daylight saving time
- Monday, October 4, 1943: UTC+2 → UTC+1 (CET)
- Monday, April 3, 1944: UTC+1 → UTC+2 (CEST), daylight saving time
- Monday, July 3, 1944: UTC+2 → UTC+3 (MSK)
Changes of the winter (standard) offset: Sunday, September 29, 1991, UTC+3 → UTC+2; Sunday, March 27, 2011, UTC+2 → UTC+3.
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): Africa/Nairobi, Asia/Amman, Asia/Baghdad, Asia/Damascus, Asia/Qatar, Asia/Riyadh, Europe/Istanbul, Europe/Kirov, Europe/Moscow, Europe/Simferopol, Europe/Volgograd.
Places on Europe/Minsk
- MinskBY
Convert Minsk time
Using Europe/Minsk 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: 'Europe/Minsk' })
# Python 3.9+
from zoneinfo import ZoneInfo
from datetime import datetime
datetime.now(ZoneInfo('Europe/Minsk'))
// Java
java.time.ZonedDateTime.now(java.time.ZoneId.of("Europe/Minsk"))
// Go
loc, _ := time.LoadLocation("Europe/Minsk")
time.Now().In(loc)
-- PostgreSQL
SELECT now() AT TIME ZONE 'Europe/Minsk';
# Shell
TZ='Europe/Minsk' 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.