Convert SAST to BST

BST is 1 hour behind SAST. SAST is UTC+2 and BST is UTC+1.

Which BST is this?

BST names more than one zone. This page reads it as British Summer Time at UTC+1, which is the reading most converters take. There is one other: Bangladesh Standard Time at UTC+6, used in Bangladesh, all year.

The letters on a meeting invitation do not say which one is meant. If yours is not British Summer Time, the answer above is wrong, and not by a little:

The large converter sites disagree about this as well: search for a BST conversion and some of the results answer for one reading and some for another, none of them saying which they chose. Where it matters, ask which country the sender is in rather than which letters they typed.

Best time to schedule a meeting

Standard 9–5 working hours overlap for 7 hours: 10:00 AM–5:00 PM SAST (9:00 AM–4:00 PM BST). Schedule meetings inside that window.

SAST to BST conversion table

About SAST

South Africa Standard Time (SAST) is UTC+2. It is used in South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini.

South Africa Standard Time is UTC+2 with no daylight saving, unchanged since 1903 apart from two wartime years. The whole country keeps it, and so do Lesotho and Eswatini. Against the UK it is two hours ahead in winter and one in summer, which is the shift that catches London–Johannesburg standing calls every March and October.

About BST

British Summer Time (BST) is UTC+1. It is used in the UK from late March to late October.

British Summer Time is UTC+1, in force in the UK and Ireland from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October. The abbreviation is ambiguous: BST also means Bangladesh Standard Time, UTC+6, five hours away. Within the UK it is the reason "GMT" is wrong for most of the year — the clocks are on BST from spring to autumn, and only the winter half of the year is actually GMT.

Does this gap change with the seasons?

This gap is seasonal. The abbreviations themselves are fixed offsets, but the region on BST switches to GMT (UTC+0) from late October to late March. So the 1-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.

SAST does not shift, so the whole change comes from one side. A recurring meeting fixed in SAST will appear to move by an hour for everyone on the other side, twice a year, without anyone changing anything.

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

Other SAST conversions

• SAST to UTC
• SAST to GMT
• SAST to EST
• SAST to EDT
• SAST to CST
• SAST to CDT
• SAST to MST
• SAST to MDT
• SAST to PST
• SAST to PDT
• SAST to AKST
• SAST to HST
• SAST to BRT
• SAST to CET
• SAST to EEST
• SAST to MSK

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