Forex market hours: when each session opens and closes
The four sessions in UTC, why three of them move twice a year and Tokyo never does, and which overlap actually carries the volume.
The currency market runs continuously from Sunday evening to Friday evening, but it is not equally busy at all hours. Trading follows the business day around the globe, handing off from one financial centre to the next, and the difference between a quiet hour and a busy one shows up directly in the spread you pay.
Below are the four sessions in UTC. Times are given for northern summer and northern winter, because three of the four move with daylight saving.
The four sessions
| Session | Northern summer (UTC) | Northern winter (UTC) |
|---|---|---|
| Sydney | 22:00 – 07:00 | 21:00 – 06:00 |
| Tokyo | 00:00 – 09:00 | 00:00 – 09:00 |
| London | 07:00 – 16:00 | 08:00 – 17:00 |
| New York | 12:00 – 21:00 | 13:00 – 22:00 |
Each session runs nine hours.
Why Tokyo never moves
Japan does not observe daylight saving time. It is the only one of the four major centres that does not, so the Tokyo session sits at 00:00–09:00 UTC all year round while London, New York and Sydney each shift by an hour twice a year.
That has a consequence which catches people out: the relationship between sessions is not fixed. In northern summer London opens at 07:00 UTC, two hours before Tokyo closes. In northern winter it opens at 08:00 UTC, leaving a one-hour overlap instead of two.
Sydney adds a further wrinkle, because southern-hemisphere daylight saving runs on the opposite calendar to the northern one, so the Sydney–Tokyo relationship shifts on a different schedule again.
The overlap that matters
London and New York overlap from 12:00 to 16:00 UTC in northern summer, and from 13:00 to 17:00 in winter. Two of the largest centres are open at once, and this window concentrates the bulk of the day’s volume.
For a trader that is the practical point of the whole table: spreads are typically tightest during this overlap and widest in the thin hours after New York closes and before Tokyo picks up. When a broker advertises a headline spread, it is almost certainly measured inside a liquid window — not at 22:30 UTC on a Monday.
Tokyo also overlaps with Sydney for most of its session, but the combined volume of those two is considerably smaller than the London–New York window.
When the week starts and ends
The week opens with Sydney on Sunday evening UTC and closes when New York finishes on Friday. Weekend gaps are a real risk: prices can move on news while the market is shut, and Monday’s opening quote may sit some distance from Friday’s close. A stop order does not protect against a gap, because there is no trading in between to fill it.
Where this shows up in costs
Overnight financing is applied at a fixed moment each day, commonly around 21:00 or 22:00 UTC depending on the provider, and a position held across that moment is charged for a full day regardless of how long it was actually open. Wednesday usually carries a triple charge, because it settles the coming weekend.
Check the exact rollover time in your broker’s own contract specifications rather than assuming. It varies between providers, and it is one of the more common sources of costs people do not expect.
Sources
- Myfxbook — Forex Market Hours
- BabyPips — Forex Market Hours tool
- FXOpen — Trading time zones and overlaps