Forex Market Hours: Live Trading Sessions Clock (Free)

By Katie Katie, author of Katie Tutorials KatieTrader and educator · 7+ yearsKatie has traded short-term options for more than seven years and teaches 300,000+ subscribers on YouTube. Every lesson here comes from her own trading journal, mistakes included.Full bioNo signals, no paid mentoring. How the lessons are kept honest · Free tool · Reviewed October 3, 2026

The forex market is open 24 hours a day from Sunday evening to Friday evening, but some hours are far busier than others. The clock below shows the four forex trading sessions in your own time zone: which are open now, when the next one opens and when the market is at its busiest.

Your time zone 24-hour time

Right now

Contents (14)

How to use the forex market hours clock
When does the forex market open and close?
The four forex trading sessions
Why some hours are better to trade than others
The London and New York overlap: the busiest hours
The quiet hours to be careful with
Is the forex market open on weekends?
Why forex market hours change in March and October
US stock market hours
Best time to trade forex from where you live
The short version
Forex market hours: common questions
Related calculators
Learn it properly

How to use the forex market hours clock

The dark line in the middle is now. To the left you see the last 12 hours, to the right the next 12. Each coloured bar is one trading session, already converted to your time. Striped bars are sessions that do not happen because it is the weekend.

Press on the timeline and drag the line to check any hour, with the mouse or with a finger on a phone. The time in each city changes with it, and the bubble tells you which sessions are open then and how busy the market usually is. Let go and the line goes back to now.

The curve at the bottom is the typical activity: green when the big centres overlap, yellow in between, red when only a quiet session is open. Under the clock, the “Right now” cards count down to the next open or close.

When does the forex market open and close?

The forex market opens on Sunday at 5pm New York time and closes on Friday at 5pm New York time. In between it never stops. That is why you will often read that forex is open 24 hours a day, five days a week.

But open does not mean busy. The market is open at 3am on a Tuesday and at 3pm on a Tuesday, and these are two very different hours to trade.

The reason is simple. There is no single building where currencies are traded. Banks, funds and brokers in different cities trade with each other. When the working day starts in a city, its traders sit down at their desks, and when it ends, they go home. So the activity travels around the world with the sun.

Think of a long street of shops that never closes. The street is always there, but the shops open and close at different times. When only one small shop is open, there are few customers. When the two biggest shops are open at once, the street is full.

The four forex trading sessions

Traders split the day into four sessions, named after the cities where most of the trading happens. These are the usual hours, in each city’s own time:

Session	Usual hours (local time)	What it is like
Sydney	7am to 4pm in Sydney	The week starts here. Usually the quietest session.
Tokyo	9am to 6pm in Tokyo	Busier. Pairs with the Japanese yen and the Australian dollar move the most.
London	8am to 5pm in London	The biggest session. London is the largest centre for currency trading in the world.
New York	8am to 5pm in New York	The second biggest. Most important US news comes out during this session.

You do not need to convert any of this yourself. The clock at the top of the page already shows every session in your own time zone.

Why some hours are better to trade than others

When more people are trading, three things change, and all three matter to you.

The spread gets smaller. The spread is the gap between the buying and the selling price, and you pay it on every trade. In a busy hour it is small. In a quiet hour the same pair can cost you several times more.
Your orders fill closer to your price. With many buyers and sellers, there is almost always someone on the other side at the price you see.
The price moves more. That is good if your plan needs movement, and bad if you trade a small account with a big position.

The London and New York overlap: the busiest hours

The most important hours of the day are when two big sessions are open at the same time. The busiest of all is the London and New York overlap, from 8am to noon New York time, which is 1pm to 5pm in London.

In these four hours the two largest centres trade together. Spreads are usually at their tightest and the biggest moves of the day often happen here. Most major US news, like the monthly jobs report, also comes out at 8:30am New York time, right inside the overlap.

There are two smaller overlaps as well. Tokyo and London share one or two hours in the London morning, depending on the time of year. Sydney and Tokyo share several hours in the Asian morning.

The quiet hours to be careful with

After New York closes. Between about 5pm New York time and the start of Tokyo, only Sydney is open. Spreads widen, especially in the first hour, when brokers move open positions to the next day.
Friday evening. Many traders close their positions before the weekend, and the market gets thin.
Holidays. On Christmas, New Year and big national holidays the market may be open, but few people are trading.
The minutes around big news. These are not quiet, they are the opposite. Spreads jump and the price can move many pips in seconds.

None of these hours are forbidden. They are hours where a mistake costs more, without a better chance of being right.

Is the forex market open on weekends?

No. From Friday 5pm to Sunday 5pm New York time the forex market is closed. News does not stop at the weekend, though, so the first price on Sunday can be quite far from the last price on Friday. This jump is called a weekend gap.

Here is what that means in practice. EUR/USD closes on Friday at 1.0850. You hold a long trade with a stop at 1.0830. Over the weekend there is bad news, and on Sunday the market opens at 1.0800. Your stop cannot be filled at 1.0830, because the price never traded there. It is filled at the first available price, around 1.0800. You planned to lose 20 pips and you lost 50. This is why many traders close their positions before the weekend.

Why forex market hours change in March and October

London and New York move their clocks for summer time, but not on the same day. The United States changes on the second Sunday of March and the first Sunday of November. The UK and Europe change on the last Sunday of March and the last Sunday of October. Sydney moves its clocks the other way, because its summer is our winter, and Tokyo does not change at all.

So for a week or a few weeks in spring and autumn, the gaps between the sessions are an hour different from the rest of the year. If you trade by your own clock, the London open or the overlap can suddenly come an hour earlier or later for you. The clock on this page follows all of these changes, so you can always trust what it shows.

US stock market hours

If you trade US shares rather than currencies, the hours are simpler. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq are open from 9:30am to 4pm New York time, Monday to Friday. They close on US public holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Some brokers also offer trading before the open and after the close. Few people trade then, so the spreads are wide and the prices jump more easily. The first hour and the last hour of the regular session are usually the busiest.

Best time to trade forex from where you live

Because the market follows the sun, the best hours depend on your own time zone. Roughly:

Europe, Africa and the Middle East: the London session is your daytime, and the overlap with New York is your afternoon. In central Europe it runs from about 2pm to 6pm.
North and South America: the overlap is your morning. In New York it is 8am to noon, in São Paulo about 9am to 1pm.
Asia and Australia: the Tokyo session is your working day, and the London open falls in your afternoon or evening.

Then comes the part that matters more than any of this. The best hour on the clock is not always your best hour. When I started, I sat at the screen from the European open to the American close, because more hours sounded like more chances. When I later sorted my trading journal by hour, my worst trades were clustered at the end of those long days. Nothing about the market explained it. I was simply tired.

Now I trade the first two hours of the American session and then stop. Pick one window of an hour or two, trade only that, and let your own record tell you whether it works for you.

The short version

The forex market is open from Sunday 5pm to Friday 5pm New York time, and it moves through four sessions: Sydney, Tokyo, London and New York. The busiest and usually cheapest hours to trade are when London and New York overlap. Be careful in the quiet hours, around big news and before the weekend. And whatever the clock says, trade the hours when you are fresh.

Forex market hours: common questions

Is the forex market open 24 hours a day?

Yes, on weekdays. It opens on Sunday at 5pm New York time and closes on Friday at 5pm New York time, without a break in between. It is closed on Saturday and most of Sunday.

What time does the forex market open on Sunday?

At 5pm New York time, when the Sydney session starts the new week. The clock at the top of this page shows what that is in your own time zone.

What is the best time to trade forex?

For most currency pairs, the four hours when London and New York are both open: 8am to noon New York time. That is when spreads are tightest and most traders are active. The best time for you also depends on when you are awake and rested.

When is the forex market quietest?

In the hours after New York closes and before Tokyo gets busy, on Friday evening, and on holidays such as Christmas and New Year. Spreads are wider then and prices can jump.

Are forex market hours the same at every broker?

Roughly, yes. The sessions are set by the working day in each financial centre, not by your broker. But platforms often show their own server time, and the exact open and close can differ by a few minutes, so check yours.

Learn it properly

For education only, not financial advice. Session times are the usual hours of each financial centre; your broker’s platform may differ by a few minutes, and holidays change them. The clock runs in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere.