Convert PST (Pacific Standard Time) to CET (Central European Time)

Best time to schedule a meeting

Standard 9–5 working hours do not overlap at all between PST and CET. Someone has to take an early or late call — or use asynchronous communication instead.

PST to CET conversion table

About PST

Pacific Standard Time (PST) is UTC−8. It is used in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver in winter.

Pacific Standard Time is UTC−8, used by Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver from November to March. As with EST, the abbreviation is written all year in practice — a great deal of software, and most conference invitations from the US west coast, say PST when the sender means PDT. If a time from a US source looks an hour off between March and November, this is almost always why.

About CET

Central European Time (CET) is UTC+1. It is used in Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Rome and Warsaw in winter.

Central European Time is UTC+1 and covers most of continental Europe in winter — Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Rome, Warsaw. It is worth noting how much of the continent this is: Spain sits geographically west of Britain but runs an hour ahead of it, a legacy of a 1940 decision that was never reversed. From late March to late October the same countries are on CEST, UTC+2.

Does this gap change with the seasons?

This gap is seasonal. The abbreviations themselves are fixed offsets, but the region on PST switches to PDT (UTC−7) from March to November, and the region on CET switches to CEST (UTC+2) from late March to late October. So the 9-hour figure on this page is correct for the part of the year when both places are actually on these abbreviations, and changes by an hour outside it.

Because both sides shift, there are also short windows each spring and autumn when one has changed and the other has not — the two regions do not switch on the same date. A recurring meeting set during one of those windows is an hour out for a week or two, which is the most common way this catches people.

This is the reason scheduling systems store an IANA zone such as Region/City rather than an offset or an abbreviation: the zone knows its own rules and the offset does not.

Frequently asked questions