Current time in Cartagena, Colombia
The current local time in Cartagena is shown below. Cartagena observes COT.
What's the daylight saving status?
Cartagena does not observe daylight saving time. The local offset is fixed year-round.
When are sunrise & sunset today?
What are the timezone facts?
- Timezone
- America/Bogota
- Standard abbreviation
- COT
- Observes daylight saving
- No
- Country
- 🇨🇴 Colombia
- Business hours
- 09:00 – 17:00 local
What's the timezone history of Cartagena?
Cartagena uses Colombia Time at UTC-5 year-round, the same offset as the rest of the country and aligned with US Eastern Standard Time during the northern winter. Colombia has not observed daylight saving since a brief energy-crisis experiment in 1992 and 1993. The country covers around eight degrees of longitude, so Cartagena's near-coastal position and Bogotá's interior plateau experience subtly different sunrise and sunset times despite sharing a wall clock; the gap is around 25 minutes at the solstices.
What are the working hours in Cartagena?
Tourism and port logistics anchor Cartagena's economy, with hospitality scheduling running well into the evening. Office hours in the modern Bocagrande and Manga districts follow the Colombian standard of 08:00 to 17:30, often with a one-hour lunch around midday. The historic centre's restaurants and bars run later than Bogotá norms, with dinner service from 19:30. The annual Hay Festival in late January and Independence Day commemorations on 11 November concentrate visitor traffic and reshape local working hours significantly.
Where is Cartagena?
Cartagena occupies a series of bays and islands on Colombia's Caribbean coast, roughly 700 kilometres north of Bogotá by air. The city proper holds around 1 million residents and the wider metropolitan area approaching 1.1 million. The historic walled colonial centre, founded in 1533 by Pedro de Heredia, sits on a small peninsula extending into the inner harbour and remains the geographical reference point of the city. The Magdalena River discharges into the sea around 110 kilometres east at Barranquilla.