Home > Time Zones > Time Zone abbreviations > Europe > CEST

European time zones:

CEST – Central European Summer Time

Important

CEST is only used while Daylight Saving Time is active.

During this time of year, locations on CEST are now on CET (Central European Time) instead.

Currently no cities are observing CEST

Locations going to CEST later

Current time in Madrid: Monday, December 3, 2012 at 3:37:56 AM CET
Madrid will stay on CET until Sunday, March 31, 2013 going to CEST

Find local time and time zone for a location

We recommend looking up by location name, not time zone name.

Time zone offset: UTC + 2 hours

CEST is 2 hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)

Note that CEST is a daylight saving time/summer time zone. It is generally only used during the summer in the places listed below, during the winter CET is used instead

Time zone abbreviations: CEST, MESZ

Full name is Central European Summer Time
MESZ – Mitteleuropäische Sommerzeit (German)

Email time zone indicator: +0200

An email sent from someone in the CEST time zone will have the time zone listed as "+0200" in the headers of the email. (However, "+0200" does not have to be in CEST, as other time zones could have the same UTC offset).

For actual dates DST might be observed, look at the examples below

Advertising

Where and when is CEST observed?

European countries using CEST in the summer and CET during the winter

Albania
Andorra
Austria
Belgium
Bosnia-Herzegovina
Croatia
Czech Republic
Denmark (mainland)
France
Germany
Gibraltar
Holy See/Vatican City
Hungary
Italy
Kosovo
Liechtenstein
Luxembourg
Macedonia, Republic of
Malta
Monaco
Montenegro
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
San Marino
Serbia
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain - except Canary Islands, which are on WET/WEST
Sweden
Switzerland

Time zone maps are under development and will be available later

Example location in CEST

Brussels - This time zone offset is used during summer in this location

Other time zones in Europe

Go directly through the links below, or see the Europe time zone list

BST - British Summer Time
CET - Central European Time
EEST - Eastern European Summer Time
EET - Eastern European Time
GMT - Greenwich Mean Time
IST - Irish Standard Time
KUYT - Kuybyshev Time
MSD - Moscow Daylight Time
MSK - Moscow Standard Time
SAMT - Samara Time
WEST - Western European Summer Time
WET - Western European Time