Convert PST to UTC
To convert PST to UTC: 12:00 PM PST is 8:00 PM UTC. PST is UTC-08:00 and UTC is UTC+00:00, so UTC is 8 hours ahead of PST, but not all year, as explained below.
In Coordinated Universal Time
- On a 24-hour clock
- 12:00 PST is 20:00 UTC
- The offsets
- PST is UTC-08:00, UTC is UTC+00:00
- Difference
- UTC is 8 hours ahead of PST
- Date
- Same calendar day.
- This gap does NOT hold all year Convert through the offset in force on the date you care about.
- The two ends switch on different dates, or one does not switch at all.
- PST is only in force part of the year United States: daylight time starts the second Sunday in March, at 02:00 local time and ends the first Sunday in November, at 02:00 local time (Energy Policy Act of 2005, in force since 2007). In 2026 that is 2026-03-08 to 2026-11-01. Los Angeles is on PDT between those dates.
- otherwise PDT, UTC-07:00
- Military time zone letters Z (Zulu) is UTC. A to M run east of Greenwich an hour apart, N to Y west, and J is left out. A letter names an offset, so a zone that switches to daylight time changes letter: EST is R, EDT is Q.
- PST is U (Uniform), UTC is Z (Zulu)
- In Zulu notation Four digits on a 24-hour clock, no colon, then Z for UTC.
- 2000Z
- In every zone
- HST 10:00 AKST 11:00 PST 12:00 AKDT 12:00 MST 13:00 PDT 13:00 CST 14:00 MDT 14:00 EST 15:00 CDT 15:00 EDT 16:00 UTC 20:00 GMT 20:00 BST 21:00 CET 21:00 CEST 22:00 EET 22:00 EEST 23:00 MSK 23:00 IST 01:30 SGT 04:00 HKT 04:00 JST 05:00 AEST 06:00 AEDT 07:00 NZST 08:00 NZDT 09:00
How the Time Zone Converter works
Pacific Standard Time (PST) is UTC-08:00 and Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is UTC+00:00, so converting PST to UTC means adding 8 hours to the PST time. UTC is 8 hours ahead of PST.
Worked through: 12:00 PM PST is 8:00 PM UTC.
The gap between these two is not the same all year, which is the thing to get right. UTC never shifts and PST does, so the difference moves. Convert through the offset in force on the date you care about rather than through the abbreviation somebody typed; the offsets above are definitions and the abbreviation is a claim about the calendar.
Add eight hours, and almost everything after 16:00 Pacific crosses into the next UTC day. For a company whose engineers are in California and whose infrastructure logs in UTC, that means an afternoon deploy and its own log entries carry different dates, which makes incident timelines read as though the fix preceded the outage.
One thing worth stating plainly, because it is the most common mistake in this whole subject: an abbreviation is not a place. PST is Pacific Standard Time, which Los Angeles uses only part of the year; the rest of the time it is on PDT at UTC-07:00. UTC does not shift. If what you have is a city and a date rather than a pair of abbreviations, that is a different question and needs the tz database, not arithmetic. This is also why the shifting designations exist: PT means Pacific time whichever of the two is in force. Searching for PT and searching for PST to UTC are the same question in two vocabularies, which is why this converter answers both.
Common times for this pair:
- 9:00 AM PST is 5:00 PM UTC - 12:00 PM PST is 8:00 PM UTC - 4:00 PM PST is 12:00 AM UTC the next day - 5:00 PM PST is 1:00 AM UTC the next day
Time Zone Converter FAQ
What is the time difference between PST and UTC?
UTC is 8 hours ahead of PST. PST is UTC-08:00 and UTC is UTC+00:00, and both offsets are definitions rather than measurements, so the subtraction is exact.
What time is 12:00 PM PST in UTC?
12:00 PM PST is 8:00 PM UTC. Add 8 hours and carry the date if it crosses midnight.
Does the difference between PST and UTC change with daylight saving?
Yes, and this is the main thing to watch on this pair. UTC is fixed and PST shifts by an hour for part of the year, so the difference takes more than one value across the year. In 2026 the United States switch runs from 2026-03-08 to 2026-11-01.
Is there anything specific to this pair worth knowing?
Add eight hours, and almost everything after 16:00 Pacific crosses into the next UTC day. For a company whose engineers are in California and whose infrastructure logs in UTC, that means an afternoon deploy and its own log entries carry different dates, which makes incident timelines read as though the fix preceded the outage.
Someone wrote PST but it is summer. What do they mean?
Almost certainly the zone rather than the abbreviation: Los Angeles time, which in summer is PDT at UTC-07:00 rather than PST at UTC-08:00. People type the standard-time abbreviation all year round. If an invitation is an hour out from what you calculated, this is why.