Current time in Buenos Aires, Argentina
The current local time in Buenos Aires is shown below. Buenos Aires observes ART.
Daylight saving time
Buenos Aires does not observe daylight saving time. The local offset is fixed year-round.
Sunrise & sunset today
Timezone facts
- Timezone
- America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires
- Standard abbreviation
- ART
- Observes daylight saving
- No
- Country
- 🇦🇷 Argentina
- Business hours
- 09:00 – 18:00 local
Buenos Aires in context
Buenos Aires sits on the south-western shore of the Río de la Plata estuary, where the Paraná and Uruguay rivers meet the South Atlantic. The Autonomous City covers around 200 square kilometres and holds approximately 3 million residents, with the wider Greater Buenos Aires metropolitan area extending into the surrounding Province of Buenos Aires and reaching close to 15 million. The grid plan of the central districts, organised around the historic Plaza de Mayo, dates to the founding of the colonial settlement in 1580.
Timezone history of Buenos Aires
Argentina operates on a single national timezone, Argentina Time at UTC-3, despite the country spanning roughly 1,400 kilometres east-to-west, narrow by South American standards. Daylight saving has been adopted and abolished repeatedly through the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, most recently suspended in 2009 and not reinstated since. The UTC-3 offset means Buenos Aires sits closer to its solar position in winter than in summer, with the working day occupying a noticeably late slice of the daylight hours during the southern summer.
Working hours in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires inherits its rhythms partly from the European immigrants who shaped the city in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The working day typically runs 09:00 to 18:00 with an hour to 90 minutes for lunch; dinner is often eaten after 21:00 and social life extends late into the night. The southern summer holiday concentrates around January and early February, when many Porteños decamp to the Atlantic coast and central Buenos Aires noticeably slows. Maundy Thursday and Good Friday produce a national five-day closure each Easter.