Current Time in Chicago, United States

How Chicago Keeps Time

Chicago keeps CDT, UTC-5. The live clock normally synchronizes to the site time source and then applies the IANA rules for Chicago; until synchronization succeeds, it uses the device clock as a fallback. Daylight-saving changes are applied only where that zone actually observes them.

Chicago runs on the America/Chicago zone in the IANA time zone database, which is UTC-5 right now. The clocks change twice a year here: UTC-6 on standard time and UTC-5 while daylight saving is in force. The next change is on 1 November 2026, when clocks go back one hour.

The sun rises in Chicago at 7:13 am today and sets at 5:55 pm — 10 hours 43 minutes of daylight, with solar noon at 12:34 pm. Those times come from the city’s coordinates (41.88, -87.63), so they shift a little every day of the year.

On the two solstices, Chicago has about 15 hours 14 minutes of daylight in June and 9 hours 8 minutes in December. The difference is about 6 hours 6 minutes, which shows how strongly the local daylight cycle changes through the year.

At the current civil offset, Chicago’s longitude corresponds to a difference of about 51 minutes between zone time and longitude-based mean solar time. Today’s calculated solar noon is 12:34 pm rather than 12:00 on the clock.

CDT is one of several zones in United States, 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.

Chicago at a Glance

How Chicago Compares with Other Cities

Read the last column as the other city relative to Chicago. Where either place uses daylight saving, the gap changes for part of the year — the time difference calculator always shows today’s figure.

Nearby Listed Cities to Chicago

Distances are straight-line geographic distances between the coordinates used by the directory; road or rail distances will be longer.

Other Cities in United States

United States keeps more than one zone, so these do not all read the same.