Forex market hours in New Zealand time, in both NZST and NZDT

The clock below gives each session’s open and close in New Zealand local time beside GMT, and follows the daylight saving change rather than a fixed offset.

Forex market hours clock

The four forex trading sessions, their local market hours, and the same hours in GMT

Session	Local market hours	In GMT	In NZST	Overlap
Sydney	07:00 to 16:00 AEST	21:00 to 06:00	09:00 to 18:00
Tokyo	09:00 to 18:00 JST	00:00 to 09:00	12:00 to 21:00
London	08:00 to 17:00 GMT	08:00 to 17:00	20:00 to 05:00	London plus New York
New York	08:00 to 17:00 EST	13:00 to 22:00	01:00 to 10:00	London plus New York

London and New York overlap from 13:00 to 17:00 GMT, the highest-volume window of the trading day.

The NZST column is each centre's own market hours converted at Auckland's standard offset of UTC+12:00, so it is arithmetic rather than a reading of the clock on the day this page was built. NZDT (UTC+13:00) runs from 27 September 2026 to 4 April 2027, and every time in that column moves one hour later while it is in force. Those dates come from the time zone database rather than from this page.

Hours are each centre's own market hours, converted at its standard offset from UTC. London and New York each move one hour earlier in GMT while daylight saving is in force; the clock applies that shift and converts to your own time zone. Sessions run Monday to Friday in each centre.

When the forex market opens and closes in New Zealand time

The forex market opens on Monday morning in New Zealand, which is Sunday evening in the Americas. It closes on Saturday morning in New Zealand, which is Friday evening in the Americas. The market runs five days a week without a daily break in between.

The reason a New Zealand trader sees the week start on Monday and end on Saturday is the date line, not a different schedule. The same continuous week of trading that a trader in New York or London experiences simply begins and ends at a different point on the local calendar when viewed from New Zealand.

Once you know when the sessions fall on the New Zealand clock, the next question is who to trade them with, and the top licensed forex brokers in New Zealand are ranked on that basis.

NZST and NZDT, and the date the clocks move

New Zealand standard time is NZST, which sits at +12:00, and New Zealand daylight time is NZDT, which sits at +13:00. Daylight time runs from 27 September 2026 to 4 April 2027.

The move between the two zones matters for session times: every session time on this page moves by 60 minutes for the part of the year covered by daylight time. A converter built on a single fixed offset is therefore wrong for roughly half the year, because New Zealand moves its clocks in the southern spring while the major financial centres move theirs at different dates.

Each trading session in New Zealand local time

The trading day is divided into four sessions: Sydney, Tokyo, London and New York. Each session keeps its own local market hours, and every one of those hours lands at a different point on the New Zealand clock depending on whether the country is in NZST or NZDT.

The overlap the market watches is the one between London and New York. When both of those centres are trading at once, activity across the major pairs tends to concentrate. That overlap runs from 01:00 to 05:00 NZST, or 02:00 to 06:00 NZDT, and it shifts with the change of the clocks described above. The trading week opens at 09:00 NZST (10:00 NZDT) on Monday and closes at 10:00 NZST (11:00 NZDT) on Saturday. Because the four sessions follow each other around the clock, a New Zealand trader can work out which session is live at any moment simply by reading the local time against the four session names.

These are also the hours during which a contract for difference in New Zealand trades, since forex positions with most brokers are held as CFDs.

Which session the New Zealand dollar trades in

The Sydney session is the first to open on the New Zealand clock. It runs from 09:00 to 18:00 NZST, or 10:00 to 19:00 NZDT. Wellington trading sits alongside Sydney within those hours.

This is also the first session of the trading day as New Zealand sees it. Because the market week begins on Monday morning in New Zealand time, the Sydney session is where the New Zealand trading day starts, and the New Zealand dollar is busiest in those hours rather than in the London or New York sessions.

To trade the kiwi in these hours you need a broker with a local licence, and the FMA regulated forex brokers are the companies that hold one.

The London session in New Zealand time

The London session runs from 20:00 to 05:00 NZST, or 21:00 to 06:00 NZDT, on the New Zealand clock. That makes it a session a New Zealand trader can catch after work rather than in the middle of the night, which is why it is the one most often asked about in local time.

The London session is also one half of the overlap the market watches: London and New York. When New York joins London, the two largest centres are trading at once, and from New Zealand that combined window sits later in the evening, with its exact start and end shifting whenever the country switches between NZST and NZDT. Anyone planning to trade the London session from New Zealand should read the times against the current zone rather than a fixed offset, because the same London hours translate to two different New Zealand clock times over the course of a year.