How to Schedule Meetings Across Time Zones

Scheduling a meeting when participants are spread across multiple countries is one of those tasks that sounds simple but hides real traps. The wrong approach leads to people showing up an hour late (or not at all) after DST transitions, or calendars that display the correct time in the organizer’s timezone but the wrong time for everyone else. This guide walks through the right approach, with worked examples.

Step 1: Establish everyone’s UTC offset

Before you can find overlap, you need to know exactly where everyone is — not just the country, but the timezone and whether DST is currently active. Two US offices can be in different timezones (EST vs CST, for example). An “Australia” participant could be in Sydney (AEDT, UTC+11 in summer) or Perth (AWST, UTC+8 all year).

The reliable way to get this information is to ask participants to share their current UTC offset explicitly, or look it up using a timezone tool. Do not rely on country names alone — many countries have multiple timezones.

Use the world clock to see current times for multiple cities side by side, or the timezone converter to map a single proposed time to all participants.

Step 2: Find the overlap window

Assume standard working hours are 9:00 AM–6:00 PM local time. To find overlap, convert each participant’s working hours to UTC and find the intersection.

Example: London + New York + Singapore

• London (UTC+1, BST): 9 AM–6 PM local = 8:00–17:00 UTC
• New York (UTC−4, EDT): 9 AM–6 PM local = 13:00–22:00 UTC
• Singapore (UTC+8, SGT): 9 AM–6 PM local = 1:00–10:00 UTC

The overlap of all three: 13:00–17:00 UTC. That is 2–6 PM in London, 9 AM–1 PM in New York, and 9–11 PM in Singapore (which is late, but within reach if the Singapore participant agrees). The “least bad” window in this example is around 13:00–15:00 UTC.

Some combinations have no overlap at all within standard hours — for example, San Francisco and Tokyo differ by 16–17 hours, meaning any meeting requires at least one side to be outside of normal working hours.

Step 3: Watch for DST transition weeks

The most common source of missed meetings is a DST transition that shifts the offset between two participants. This happens because the US, EU, and Australia switch on different dates — so there are weeks of the year when the relative difference between regions is temporarily one hour different from usual.

The dangerous windows in 2026:

• March 8: US/Canada springs forward. The EU springs forward on March 29. In between, the US–EU gap is one hour narrower than usual (e.g., London is normally 5 hours ahead of New York in winter; during this window, it is only 4 hours ahead).
• October 25–November 1: The EU falls back on October 25, the US falls back on November 1. During this week, the US–EU gap is again temporarily off by one hour.
• April/October: Australian DST transitions in the opposite direction, creating similar temporary misalignments for teams working across Australia and Europe or North America.

If you have a recurring meeting, always double-check what time it shows in local time for all participants in the week after a DST transition — even if the calendar invite was created in UTC, how it displays depends on how the calendar software handles the shift.

Step 4: Express the time unambiguously

When sending a meeting invite or writing the time in an email, always include:

1. The UTC time— e.g., “14:00 UTC” — so anyone can convert without guessing which timezone you mean.
2. The local time for each region present— e.g., “14:00 UTC / 10:00 AM New York / 3:00 PM London / 10:00 PM Singapore”.
3. The date in ISO format(YYYY-MM-DD) to avoid DD/MM vs MM/DD ambiguity. “06/07” means June 7 in the US and July 6 in much of Europe.

Avoid using timezone abbreviations alone — they are ambiguous. “CST” could mean Central Standard Time (UTC−6, North America), China Standard Time (UTC+8), or Cuba Standard Time (UTC−5). Write “UTC−6” or “US Central Time” instead.

Best practices for recurring meetings

• Use calendar software that stores meeting times in UTC and converts to local time automatically (Google Calendar and Outlook both do this). Never set recurring meetings in local time.
• Around DST transition dates, send a reminder to all participants confirming what time the meeting is in their local timezone that week.
• For teams with permanent overlap problems (e.g., US West Coast + Asia), consider rotating meeting times so the burden of awkward hours is shared rather than falling on the same participants every week.
• When in doubt, record meetings and share async. Many “meetings” don’t need to be real-time.

Quick reference: common timezone pairs

These offsets apply during standard time (winter in the Northern Hemisphere). Add or subtract one hour during DST for the relevant region.