Current Time in Cairns, Australia
Time and Sun Facts for Cairns
- Local time
- 7:46 am
- Date
- Sunday, 25 October 2026
- Time zone
Australia/Brisbane- UTC offset
- UTC+10
- Daylight saving
- Not observed here — the offset is the same all year
- Sunrise
- 5:42 am
- Sunset
- 6:19 pm
- Day length
- 12 hours 36 minutes
- Coordinates
- -16.92, 145.77
How Cairns Keeps Time
Cairns keeps AEST, UTC+10. The live clock normally synchronizes to the site time source and then applies the IANA rules for Cairns; until synchronization succeeds, it uses the device clock as a fallback. Daylight-saving changes are applied only where that zone actually observes them.
Cairns runs on the Australia/Brisbane zone in the IANA time zone database, which is UTC+10 right now. There is no daylight saving here, so that offset holds all year and the difference to other places only changes when they move their own clocks.
The sun rises in Cairns at 5:42 am today and sets at 6:19 pm — 12 hours 36 minutes of daylight, with solar noon at 12:01 pm. Those times come from the city’s coordinates (-16.92, 145.77), so they shift a little every day of the year.
On the two solstices, Cairns has about 11 hours 7 minutes of daylight in June and 13 hours 8 minutes in December. The difference is about 2 hours 1 minute, which shows how strongly the local daylight cycle changes through the year.
AEST is one of several zones in Australia, so a time quoted for the country as a whole is not necessarily the time here. Check the city rather than the country when it matters.
Cairns at a Glance
| Coordinates | -16.9200, 145.7700 |
|---|---|
| IANA time zone | Australia/Brisbane |
| Current UTC offset | UTC+10 |
| Daylight saving | Not currently observed |
| Sunrise today | 5:42 am |
| Sunset today | 6:19 pm |
| Solar noon | 12:01 pm |
| Daylight today | 12 hours 36 minutes |
| Straight-line distance to Canberra | 2,069 km |
| Current clock difference vs Canberra | −1 hour |
How Cairns Compares with Other Cities
Read the last column as the other city relative to Cairns. Where either place uses daylight saving, the gap changes for part of the year — the time difference calculator always shows today’s figure.
| City | Local time | Compared with Cairns |
|---|---|---|
| London | 10:46 pm | 9 hours behind |
| New York | 5:46 pm | 14 hours behind |
| Los Angeles | 2:46 pm | 17 hours behind |
| Dubai | 1:46 am | 6 hours behind |
| Karachi | 2:46 am | 5 hours behind |
| Singapore | 5:46 am | 2 hours behind |
| Tokyo | 6:46 am | 1 hour behind |
| Sydney | 8:46 am | 1 hour ahead |
Nearby Listed Cities to Cairns
Distances are straight-line geographic distances between the coordinates used by the directory; road or rail distances will be longer.
| City | Approx. distance | Local time |
|---|---|---|
| Brisbane | 1,390 km | 7:46 am |
| Gold Coast | 1,461 km | 7:46 am |
| Darwin | 1,680 km | 7:16 am |
| Sydney | 1,961 km | 8:46 am |
| Canberra | 2,069 km | 8:46 am |
Other Cities in Australia
Australia keeps more than one zone, so these do not all read the same.
Questions People Ask
Is Cairns the time everywhere in Australia?
No. Australia currently has 5 distinct civil UTC offsets represented in the directory, so the country page separates the regions.
More Clocks and Time Zones
Keep the current time in Cairns, Australia open in a tab if you check it often. To look somewhere else up instead, start from World Clock.