Samoa Samoa, officially the Independent State of Samoa; sm, Sāmoa, and until 1997 known as Western Samoa, is a Polynesian island country consisting of two main islands (Savai'i and Upolu); two smaller, inhabited islands (Manono Island, Manono an ...

uses UTC+13:00 as standard time. It 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 (typicall ...

from 2010 to 2021, which it observed during summer in the Southern Hemisphere. In 2011, daylight saving time ended on Saturday, 2 April 2011, 04:00 local daylight time and started on Saturday, 24 September 2011, 03:00 local standard time. Because it is located near the equator, Samoa traditionally did not observe daylight saving time. The introduction of daylight saving time was initially planned for 2009 but was postponed for one year in the aftermath of the 2009 Samoa tsunami. As it is located just west of the

International Date Line The International Date Line (IDL) is an internationally accepted demarcation on the surface of Earth, running between the South and North Poles and serving as the boundary between one calendar day and the next. It passes through the Pacific O ...

, Samoa is among the first places on earth to see each new day, along with

Tonga Tonga (, ; ), officially the Kingdom of Tonga ( to, Puleʻanga Fakatuʻi ʻo Tonga), is a Polynesian country and archipelago. The country has 171 islands – of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about , scattered over in ...

Tokelau Tokelau (; ; known previously as the Union Islands, and, until 1976, known officially as the Tokelau Islands) is a dependent territory of New Zealand in the southern Pacific Ocean. It consists of three tropical coral atolls: Atafu, Nukunonu, a ...

(during standard time), and parts of

Kiribati Kiribati (), officially the Republic of Kiribati ( gil, ibaberikiKiribati),Kiribati
''The Wor ...

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 backi ...

in 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 ...

contains one zone for Samoa, named "Pacific/Apia".

2011 time zone change

Until the end of 2011, Samoa lay east of the International Date Line, observing UTC−11:00 ( UTC−10:00 during daylight saving time). This was in line with neighboring

American Samoa American Samoa ( sm, Amerika Sāmoa, ; also ' or ') is an unincorporated territory of the United States located in the South Pacific Ocean, southeast of the island country of Samoa. Its location is centered on . It is east of the International ...

, which continues to observe UTC−11:00 (

Samoa Time Zone 250px, SST is UTC-11:00 The Samoa Time Zone or Samoa Standard Time (SST) observes standard time by subtracting eleven hours from Coordinated Universal Time ( UTC-11:00). The clock time in this zone is based on the mean solar time of the 165th ...

) year-round. At the end of Thursday, 29 December 2011, Samoa continued directly to Saturday, 31 December 2011, skipping the entire calendar day of Friday, 30 December 2011 and effectively re-drawing the International Date Line. Prime minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi stated that the change was intended to improve business with New Zealand, Australia, China, and other places in Asia.

References

{{Timezones