Time in Brazil is calculated using
standard time, and the country (including its offshore islands) is divided into four standard
time zone
A time zone is an area which observes a uniform standard time for legal, commercial and social purposes. Time zones tend to follow the boundaries between countries and their subdivisions instead of strictly following longitude, because i ...
s: UTC−02:00, UTC−03:00, UTC−04:00 and UTC−05:00.
Time zones
Fernando de Noronha time (UTC−02:00)
This is the standard time zone only on a few small offshore
Atlantic islands. The only such island with a permanent population is
Fernando de Noronha, with 3,140 inhabitants (2021 estimate), 0.0015% of
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
's population.
[Population estimates]
Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, 2021. The other islands (
Trindade and Martim Vaz,
Rocas Atoll and
Saint Peter and Saint Paul Archipelago) either are totally uninhabited or have small seasonally rotating
Brazilian Navy
)
, colors= Blue and white
, colors_label= Colors
, march= " Cisne Branco" ( en, "White Swan") (same name as training ship '' Cisne Branco''
, mascot=
, equipment= 1 multipurpose aircraft carrier7 submarines6 frigates2 corvettes4 amphibious ...
garrisons or teams of scientists.
Brasília time (UTC−03:00)
The main time zone of Brazil comprises the states in the
South,
Southeast and
Northeast
The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...
regions (except the small islands mentioned above), plus the states of
Goiás,
Tocantins,
Pará and
Amapá, and the
Federal District, which includes the national capital city,
Brasília
Brasília (; ) is the federal capital of Brazil and seat of government of the Federal District. The city is located at the top of the Brazilian highlands in the country's Central-West region. It was founded by President Juscelino Kubitsche ...
. About 93% of the Brazilian population live in this time zone,
[ which covers about 60% of the country's land area.][Territorial areas]
Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, 2021. It comprises 26 of the 28 largest metropolitan areas in Brazil.
Amazon time (UTC−04:00)
This time zone is used in the states of Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Rondônia, Roraima, and most of Amazonas. Although this time zone covers about 36% of the land area of Brazil[ (an area larger than ]Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, t ...
), only about 6% of the country's population live there (about 13 million people, slightly more than the city of São Paulo
São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for 'Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the Ga ...
).[
Until 2008, the areas of the state of Pará west of the Xingu River and north of the Amazon River were also part of this time zone; then they joined the rest of the state in observing Brasília time (UTC−03:00). Although other changes to Brazilian time zones enacted at that time have since been reverted (see below), western and northern Pará still remain in UTC−03:00.
]
Acre time (UTC−05:00)
This time zone was reinstated in 2013, after having been abolished for over five years. It is used in the far-western tip of the country, which includes the entire state of Acre
The acre is a unit of land area used in the imperial and US customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one chain by one furlong (66 by 660 feet), which is exactly equal to 10 square chains, of a square mile, 4,840 square ...
and the southwestern portion of the state of Amazonas (west of a line connecting the cities of Tabatinga and Porto Acre). These areas cover only about 4% of the Brazilian territory[ (although that is still about the size of ]Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...
) and have only about 0.5% of the country's population (little more than 1 million people).[
On 24 June 2008, these areas advanced their clocks by an hour, so that they became part of the UTC−04:00 time zone. However, in a non-binding referendum held on 31 October 2010, a slight majority of Acre voters voted in favour of returning the state to UTC−05:00. On 30 October 2013, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff enacted Law 12876, establishing that the time zone switch would occur on Sunday, 10 November 2013. Since then, the state of Acre and the southwestern part of the state of Amazonas are again 5 hours behind UTC.
]
Unofficial observance
Unofficially, 32 municipalities in eastern Mato Grosso, located in the Araguaia valley, observe UTC−03:00, Brasília time. This practice started in Barra do Garças in 1998. Banks and government services still observe the legal time in these locations (UTC–04:00).Summer time begins and Araguaia starts following Mato Grosso time
Água Boa News, 10 October 2015.
Daylight saving time
Brazil observed daylight saving time
Daylight saving time (DST), also referred to as daylight savings time or simply daylight time (United States, Canada, and Australia), and summer time (United Kingdom, European Union, and others), is the practice of advancing clocks (typical ...
(DST; pt, horário de verão, "summer time") in the years of 1931–1933, 1949–1953, 1963–1968 and 1985–2019. Initially it applied to the whole country, but from 1988 it applied only to part of the country, usually the southern regions, where DST is more useful due to a larger seasonal variation in daylight duration. It typically lasted from October or November to February or March.
The most recent DST rule specified advancing the time by one hour during the period from 00:00 on the first Sunday in November to 00:00 on the third Sunday in February (postponed by one week if the latter fell on carnival), applicable only to the South, Southeast and Central-West regions,[ which comprise about 64% of the Brazilian population.][ During DST, Brasília time moved from UTC−03:00 to UTC−02:00; the other states that did not follow DST observed a change of the offset to Brasília time.
Brazil abolished DST in 2019.][
]
IANA time zone database
The IANA time zone database
The tz database is a collaborative compilation of information about the world's time zones, primarily intended for use with computer programs and operating systems. Paul Eggert is its current editor and maintainer, with the organizational back ...
contains 16 zones for Brazil. Columns marked with * are from the file zone.tab
This is a list of time zones from release of the tz database.
Legend Type
* Canonical - The primary, preferred zone name.
* Link - An alternative name (alias) which links to a canonical zone.
* Link - A standard Link (as above). The dagger symb ...
of the database.
See also
* Date and time notation in Brazil
* List of time zones
Notes
References
External links
Time Service Division
of the National Observatory of Brazil
Legal time in Brazil
{{DEFAULTSORT:Time In Brazil
Time in South America