What time is it in North Carolina right now?

It is 11:49 am in Raleigh right now, Thursday, November 5, 2026. North Carolina runs on EST at UTC-5. Every reading on this page is computed from the IANA time zone database at the moment you loaded it, and the clocks above and below tick on from there.

Time in North Carolina now

North Carolina keeps a single time zone, America/New_York, so there is one answer to the question and it is the same in every town: 11:49 am. The offset is UTC-5, and it is the standard one at the moment.

The offset from UTC in Raleigh is UTC-5, which is 5 hours behind Coordinated Universal Time. Nine in the morning in Raleigh is 2:00 pm UTC.

North Carolina time zone in full

Each row is a zone identifier from the IANA database, its reading at this instant, its offset from UTC and whether it is currently on standard or summer time. All of them agree today, which is the usual case for North Carolina.

Does North Carolina have daylight saving time?

North Carolina does observe daylight saving, in every zone it has. The next change is on March 14, 2027, when the clocks go forward and UTC-5 becomes UTC-4. Until then the offset here is UTC-5.

Because the clocks move, the gap between North Carolina and anywhere that does not move its own is not a constant. It shifts by an hour twice a year, and a difference memorised in one season is wrong in the other. That is the single most common source of a missed call into North Carolina.

Where North Carolina is on the map

The marker is on Raleigh, the point every sun reading and every call window on this page is worked out from.

Time difference between Raleigh and major cities

Worked out at this instant rather than from a stored table, so daylight saving on either side is already in it.

Best time to call North Carolina

A nine to five working day in Raleigh against a nine to five day elsewhere. The overlap column is the stretch when both desks are open, given on each side's own clock.

Daylight hours in Raleigh today

In Raleigh the sun rose at 6:41 am today and sets at 5:15 pm, giving 10 hours 34 minutes of daylight. The capital is losing 1 minute 53 seconds of daylight a day at the moment, and the sun stands highest at 11:58 am.

Solar noon in Raleigh is 11:58 am, which is 2 minutes before clock noon. That gap is the capital sitting at 78.64 degrees west while its clock is set to America/New_York, plus the equation of time, which today runs 16.5 minutes ahead of mean time, plus an hour of daylight saving for part of the year.

Moon phase over Raleigh tonight

The moon is waning crescent tonight, 26.0 days into the current lunation, with roughly 13 percent of the disc lit. The next full moon falls on November 24, 2026 as North Carolina reads the date, at 9:53 am local. The moon phase page has the full cycle.

Current time in North Carolina cities

The 11 cities this site covers inside North Carolina, alphabetically, each with its own ticking clock and its own sunrise page.

Every IANA time zone in North Carolina

These are the identifiers a computer uses. A program that stores America/New_York rather than UTC-5 keeps working through every future rule change, which is the whole reason the database is keyed this way.

Convert North Carolina time to another zone

The converter pages below take EST against the zones people most often measure it from. Each one carries a full conversion table rather than a single answer.

Information about North Carolina

North Carolina is a state of the United States, abbreviated NC, with its capital at Raleigh (35.78 degrees north, 78.64 degrees west). Its clock is set by a single zone, which is a federal matter rather than a state one, although a state may opt out of daylight saving.

Upcoming dates in North Carolina

Read on North Carolina's own clock, so the day counts below start from November 5 and not from a UTC date. The list is the internationally observed calendar plus the US federal holidays, along with the state's own clock changes and the next solstices and equinoxes. National days set by a country's own statute are not included, because this site carries no statute table and a guessed one would be worse than an honest gap.

Sun and moon in Raleigh today

The sun is up in Raleigh for 10 hours 34 minutes today, from 6:41 am to 5:15 pm. The moon rises in Raleigh at 3:02 am and sets at 3:09 pm. The next phase is the new moon on November 9, 2026. It is 13% lit at the moment, a waning crescent, thinning by about 7.1 percentage points a day.

Twilight is graded by how far the sun has dropped below the horizon. Civil twilight ends six degrees down, which is roughly the point at which you need a light to read outside. Nautical twilight ends at twelve degrees, when the horizon at sea stops being usable for a sextant sight. Astronomical twilight ends at eighteen degrees, which is full darkness for an observer.

Golden hour is the stretch with the sun between six degrees above the horizon and four below it, and blue hour runs from there down to six degrees below. Neither is literally an hour: each is as long as the sun takes to cross those few degrees, which is minutes near the equator and can be most of the evening at high latitude.

Moonrise and moonset are computed to the moment the moon's upper edge touches a flat horizon, allowing for refraction, for the size of the disc and for the moon's parallax, which together put the centre of the moon at 0.125 degrees above the horizon at the instant it rises. That is a different horizon from the one sunrise uses, and it is why a moonrise time cannot be worked out with a sunrise formula.

Prayer times in Raleigh

Seven days from November 5, 2026, computed for Raleigh at 35.78 degrees north, 78.64 degrees west, on the clock of America/New_York. The method is Muslim World League (Muslim World League, Mecca), which puts Fajr at 18.0 degrees below the horizon and Isha at 17.0 degrees. Asr uses the Standard shadow ratio of 1, which is the Shafi'i, Maliki and Hanbali position.

Dhuhr is solar noon at Raleigh, the instant the Sun crosses the local meridian, so it moves with longitude inside the time zone and with the equation of time through the year rather than sitting at a fixed clock reading. Sunrise and Maghrib are the standard refracted horizon, the same 0.833 degrees every almanac uses. Every figure above is computed from the Sun's position for this exact coordinate; none of it is copied from a table.

Different methods disagree, and that is expected rather than an error. Fajr under ISNA at 15 degrees comes later than Fajr under Egyptian General Authority of Survey at 19.5 degrees, by twenty minutes or more depending on latitude and season. Follow whichever your local mosque follows.

Qibla direction from Raleigh

From Raleigh the qibla is 55.8 degrees on a true compass, which is northeast, or 34.2 degrees north of due east. The Kaaba is 10,944 km away, 6,800 miles, measured over the surface of the Earth.

That figure is the initial bearing of the great circle from Raleigh to 21.4225 degrees north, 39.8262 degrees east, which is the Kaaba inside Masjid al-Haram. That reads as a surprise on a flat map, where Mecca sits well to the southeast. A flat map is not the Earth. The shortest path from Raleigh to Mecca is a great circle that runs northeast over the Atlantic and Europe, and the qibla is the bearing of that path where you stand.

The bearing is measured from true north, not magnetic north. A magnetic compass points at the magnetic pole, and the difference between the two can be anything from nothing to more than twenty degrees depending where you are, so check your compass reading against magnetic declination for Raleigh before you use it. A phone compass set to true north, or the shadow of a vertical stick at local solar noon, avoids the problem entirely.

Questions about the time in North Carolina

What time is it in North Carolina right now?

It is 11:49 am in Raleigh as this page was served, Thursday, November 5, 2026. The clock at the top of the page ticks on from there.

What time zone is North Carolina in?

North Carolina uses America/New_York, currently EST at UTC-5.

What is the UTC offset in North Carolina?

UTC-5 in Raleigh at this instant.

Does North Carolina observe daylight saving time?

Yes. The next change is March 14, 2027.

What time does the sun set in Raleigh today?

5:15 pm, after a sunrise at 6:41 am and 10 hours 34 minutes of daylight.

When is the best time to call North Carolina from the United States?

Between 9:00 am and 5:00 pm New York time, which is 9:00 am to 5:00 pm in Raleigh.

Where else to look

All countries · All cities · Timezone converter · Sunrise and sunset · Moon phases