Alaska Time Zone: Clock Changes, Daylight Saving and How Late the Sun Sets

You are standing on a sidewalk in Anchorage after dinner, the light is still soft and golden, and your phone insists it is almost midnight. That small jolt is the whole story of Alaska’s clocks. The state sits in its own time zone, one hour behind Pacific, and it moves its clocks twice a year like most of the country, which shapes how long the evenings feel and how short the winter days seem.

What time zone is Alaska in?

Alaska is in the Alaska Time Zone, which covers nearly all of the state and runs one hour behind the Pacific Time Zone. Anchorage, the largest city in the zone, sets the rhythm for flights, business calls and television schedules, and Juneau, Fairbanks, Ketchikan and Nome all follow the same clock.

The two names of the Alaska clock

The zone has a winter name and a summer name. Alaska Standard Time (AKST) is the winter clock, and Alaska Daylight Time (AKDT) is the summer clock. You will see both abbreviations on flight confirmations, ferry tickets, tour vouchers and email headers, so it helps to know that AKDT is simply the version in force once spring has arrived.

Alaska spends most of the year on daylight saving time rather than standard time. For a visitor, that means the clock you will meet on most trips is AKDT, and the offsets from universal time are laid out here for anyone converting a schedule.

How Alaska compares with the Pacific coast

If you are coming from Seattle, Portland or Los Angeles, subtract one hour from your home clock and you have Alaska time. Both zones change their clocks on the same days, so the gap holds steady through the year. A call you make at nine in the morning from the Pacific coast reaches Anchorage at eight, a pleasant early hour for a business that opens at the start of the day.

Juneau is a useful reference because it lines up so closely with the zone’s standard meridian. The city sits in the Alaska Time Zone, one hour behind Pacific, and observes daylight saving like the rest of the state. If you fly in from the Lower 48 and then move on by ferry within Southeast Alaska, your watch stays put, because every stop along the way keeps the same time.

Setting your devices and your day

Phones and laptops usually adjust on their own once they connect to a network, so the only clocks you may need to fix by hand are a watch, a rental-car dashboard or a camera. Many travelers also keep a note of the Pacific hour for calls home, since most of the people they will be phoning from Alaska live on that coast or farther east.

Plan your days by the light rather than by the numbers on the wall. In Anchorage, the zone’s largest city, a dinner reservation at eight in the evening in the long days of summer feels like mid-afternoon, and a breakfast at eight in midwinter happens in the dark. The clock is the same, the experience of it is not.

Does Alaska change its clocks?

Yes, Alaska changes its clocks twice a year, moving forward in spring and back in the fall, on the same schedule as the rest of the country. The current rule has been in effect from 2007, and it explains why the state sits on daylight saving time for most of the year.

The dates the clocks move

In spring, the clock jumps ahead on the second Sunday in March. At two in the morning on that day, Alaska Standard Time becomes three o’clock Alaska Daylight Time, and the night loses an hour of sleep. In the fall, the clock falls back on the first Sunday in November, when two in the morning Alaska Daylight Time becomes one o’clock Alaska Standard Time.

Because the fall change comes in early November, a trip that straddles it asks for a little attention. A flight, a ferry or a train leaving in the small hours of that Sunday morning is the only kind of departure where the repeated hour could confuse you, so read the time on your ticket carefully.

What “double daylight time” means in Anchorage

Anchorage is one solar hour behind its legal time zone, and because it also observes daylight saving, the legal clock and the sun’s actual position end up two hours apart in summer. Some local residents have a name for this: double daylight time. It is the reason an evening in Anchorage can look like a calm late afternoon while the clock tells you the day is nearly over.

For a traveler, the practical effect is more daylight at the end of the day and a later, slower feel to the evening. People stretch their dinners, walks and errands past the hours you would expect elsewhere. In the dark months, the opposite happens, and the morning arrives well after the clock says it should.

Where you are in the calendar right now

In mid-October, Alaska is still on daylight time, with the fall change a few weeks off. Alaska Day falls on October 18, a legal holiday that marks the formal transfer of Alaska from Russia to the United States at Fort Sitka in 1867. The date sits well before the clocks go back, so a trip built around it runs entirely on AKDT.

Once the clocks fall back in early November, the evenings come earlier and the mornings brighten. Travelers who like to be out at first light will find the shift welcome, and those who prefer a long evening outdoors will notice the difference right away.

Does the whole state use the same time?

Almost, but not quite. The Alaska Time Zone includes nearly all of the state, so on a trip to Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau, Denali or Nome you will use a single clock. A few communities at the far end of the Aleutian chain keep a different zone, and most visitors never go near them.

The state is by far the largest in the country, and a single clock stretched over that much ground has odd consequences. The clock and the sun agree in some places and drift far apart in others, which is where the stories about Alaska’s light come from.

Where the sun and the clock disagree

Juneau, much closer to the 135° west meridian that anchors the zone, has its sun and its clock nearly in step, so midday there feels like midday. Farther along the map, the gap widens. In Fairbanks, the sun sets after midnight on the summer solstice, which is a surprise for anyone used to a sunset before bedtime, and in Nome, the winter solstice brings a sunrise after noon.

Visitors from more southerly latitudes are often startled to see the sun still up so late in Anchorage. Plan evening outings accordingly, since the light keeps going long after the hour at which you would normally head back to your room.

Moving around the state on one clock

Because nearly all of Alaska shares a zone, getting from one town to another rarely means touching your watch. Juneau, the capital, is not connected by road to the rest of the North American highway system, so you reach it by air or by water, and the same goes for most of Southeast Alaska, where communities rely on the Alaska Marine Highway. Only Haines, Hyder and Skagway have direct road connections to the continental road network.

The Alaska Marine Highway runs a ferry from Bellingham, Washington, to Haines through the Inside Passage. Bellingham sits on Pacific time, so a traveler on that route ends up one hour behind the clock they started with, which is worth remembering when you plan a pickup or a hotel check-in at the other end.

A word on the far north

Utqiaġvik, formerly Barrow, is the northernmost city in the United States and sits on the North Slope, far from the road system. It follows the same zone as Anchorage, so a call or a flight booking from there uses the same time. The light in such northern places can swing sharply through the year, and the daylight in any one spot depends on the season rather than on the clock.

Denali, at 20,310 feet the highest mountain in North America, rises within Denali National Park and Preserve and keeps the same time as the rest of the state. Mountains, glaciers and national forests, including the Tongass in Southeast Alaska, all run on the same clock, so the only adjustment is your own sense of when the day ends.

Good to know before you go

Check your phone’s clock when you land, and remember that the evening light can be long even when the hour is late. The White Pass and Yukon Route train from Skagway to Carcross, Yukon, runs from May to early October, so it is no longer on the schedule by mid-October.

If you plan a drive from the Lower 48, the Alaska Highway through Canada is paved and maintained year-round. Alaska observes all federal holidays except Columbus Day, and adds Seward’s Day on the last Monday in March and Alaska Day on October 18.

Sources

• Wikipedia, Alaska Time Zone (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Time_Zone), checked October 11, 2026
• Wikipedia, Alaska Daylight Time (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Daylight_Time), checked October 11, 2026
• Wikivoyage, Alaska (https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Alaska), checked October 11, 2026
• Travel Juneau, travel tips and weather (https://www.traveljuneau.com/discover-juneau/travel-tips-weather/), checked October 11, 2026

To plan your stay

• Best Time to Visit Alaska: Midnight Sun, Northern Lights, Weather and Seasons
• Where to Stay in Alaska: Anchorage, Girdwood, Fairbanks and Denali Lodges
• Alaska Airports: Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau, Sitka and Bush Flying
• Know Before You Go to Alaska: Layers, Bears, Road Conditions and Time Zone