How wrong is your clock?

The sun is highest in the sky at a moment called solar noon. Before railways, towns set their clocks by it, so noon on the town clock was noon in the sky. Time zones replaced that with a handful of shared clocks, each one right for a single line of longitude and a little wrong everywhere else. Then politics and daylight saving pushed many clocks further from the sun, nearly always in the same direction: ahead. When the clock runs ahead of the sun, everything in the sky happens later by the clock. The sun rises later, stands highest later and sets later.

How far ahead is easy to measure. The sun moves across the sky at 15 degrees of longitude an hour, so every place has its own solar time, four minutes later for each degree further east. Compare that with the clock on the wall and you have the gap. I did this for every 22 km hexagon of the world's population and every town of 1,000 people or more in GeoNames, day by day through 2026, using the official time zone boundaries and the rules in the IANA time zone database.

01 · The mapHow far the clock runs ahead of the sun

Two things jump out. First, the map is mostly orange. Few places keep a clock behind the sun, and almost none by much: only 1.7% of the world's people live where the clock is more than half an hour behind it on average. Second, the deepest colours come from political choices, not geography. All of China keeps Beijing time; all of India keeps one time; Spain keeps the time of Berlin; Argentina keeps a clock an hour ahead of its natural zone.

02 · Who lives aheadThree people in four live ahead of the sun

Averaged over 2026, 76% of the world's people live where the clock is ahead of the sun, 33% more than half an hour ahead and 9.2% more than an hour ahead. The typical person's clock runs 19 min fast. Strip out daylight saving and the picture barely changes, because most people live in countries that do not change their clocks: 71% still live ahead of the sun. Daylight saving matters most in June, when 13.6% of the world's people have a clock more than an hour ahead. Only 15% of the world's people changed their clocks at all in 2026.

Of the 162 countries with a million people or more, 135 run ahead of the sun on average and 19 by more than an hour. The countries that run behind tend to sit at the eastern edge of a zone (Qatar, Mozambique, Costa Rica, Bahrain) and only by about twenty minutes.

03 · GaliciaThe late mornings of the Atlantic edge of Spain

Anyone who has spent a winter in Galicia knows the feeling: it is still dark at what feels like the middle of the morning. The numbers bear it out. In A Coruña the latest sunrise of the year comes on 3 January at 9:06. Santiago de Compostela's latest is 9:05 and Vigo's 9:04. London, 8.1 degrees further north with much shorter winter days, never sees the sun later than 8:06. Madrid's latest is 8:38 and Barcelona's 8:18.

The reason is longitude. Spain keeps Central European Time, the clock of Berlin and Rome, and Galicia is the westernmost part of mainland Spain, near 8.5 degrees west. The sun there runs 1 h 34 min behind the clock in winter and 2 h 34 min behind it in summer. Over the year A Coruña's clock is 2 h 8 min ahead of the sun on average, and Vigo's 2 h 9 min: the two most of any city of 100,000 people or more in the European group below. In 2026 the sun rises after 9:00 on 35 days in A Coruña and after 8:30 on 115 days, almost a third of the year. In June solar noon falls at 14:35 and the sun sets at 22:18.

Portugal, next door, keeps the clock of London. Porto lies at almost exactly the same longitude as Vigo, so the two see the same sun, but Vigo's clock runs 61 minutes further ahead. Porto's latest sunrise is 8:00. Across the Miño at Tui, the clock jumps by an hour on the bridge.

Among the 590 cities of 100,000 people or more south of 55 degrees north in western, central and northern Europe (the EU apart from Cyprus and Malta, plus the UK, Norway and Switzerland), only Brest, at the tip of Brittany, has a later winter sunrise than A Coruña (9:09). Vigo and Ourense come third and fourth. Every other city with a later sunrise is in the far north, in Finland, Norway, Sweden or Estonia, where the winter days are short. And Vigo has the latest solar noon of all 630 cities in that group: 14:37 on 21 June.

04 · Around the worldWhere the clock and the sun part company

Western China: one clock for nearly four time zones' worth of country

China's towns span 59 degrees of longitude, nearly enough for four time zones, but the whole country keeps Beijing time. In Fuyuan, on the Amur in the far north-east, the clock runs 57 min behind the sun. In Kashgar, in the far west, it runs 2 h 56 min ahead, the most of any city of 100,000 or more in the world. Kashgar's latest sunrise is 10:17, solar noon in winter comes at 14:54, and in June the sun sets at 22:27. Many people in Xinjiang keep an unofficial local clock two hours behind Beijing, which the tz database records as "Asia/Urumqi". On that clock Kashgar would be 56 min ahead of the sun. The border with Afghanistan, in the Wakhan corridor, has the biggest clock jump between neighbours anywhere: 3 h 30 min.

India: one time for almost 30 degrees of longitude

India Standard Time is set five and a half hours ahead of Greenwich, which is right for a line through the middle of the country. Among cities of 100,000 or more, the clock in Porbandar on the Gujarat coast runs 52 min ahead of the sun, while in Tinsukia, in Assam, it runs 51 min behind: the most behind of any city of that size in the world. That is 1 h 43 min of difference. On 21 June the sun rises at 4:14 in Tinsukia and 6:10 in Porbandar.

Argentina: an hour ahead all year

Almost all of Argentina lies west of 52.5 degrees west, the natural western edge of UTC minus three, yet the country keeps UTC minus three all year. Buenos Aires runs 54 min ahead of the sun, Córdoba 1 h 17 min and Mendoza 1 h 35 min. In Ushuaia the midwinter sun does not rise until 9:59.

Russia: Moscow time reaches the Arctic Urals

Russia uses 11 different offsets. Moscow time stretches a long way east: in Vorkuta, near the northern end of the Urals at 64 degrees east, the clock runs 1 h 16 min behind the sun, and small places near it are the most behind of any town of 1,000 people or more on Earth. At the other end of the Russian range, Novosibirsk runs 1 h 28 min ahead.

The UK: almost forty minutes from east to west

Greenwich is near the eastern edge of Britain, so most of the UK is a little ahead of the sun even in winter. In Lowestoft, the most easterly town, the winter clock runs 7 min behind the sun; in Enniskillen in County Fermanagh it runs 31 min ahead. On 21 December the sun rises at 8:04 in London, 8:44 in Belfast and 9:12 in Stornoway, 68 minutes after London. With summer time, London's clock runs 1 h ahead in June and Belfast's 1 h 24 min.

05 · ExtremesThe most and least sun-wrong cities

All ten of the cities furthest ahead are in Xinjiang. All ten furthest behind are in north-east India or north-east China, at the eastern ends of those same single national clocks. Of 6,286 cities of 100,000 or more, 77% run ahead of the sun over the year and 14% more than an hour ahead.