Current time in Houston, United States
The current local time in Houston is shown below. Houston observes CST in winter and CDT during daylight saving time.
Daylight saving time
Sunrise & sunset today
Timezone facts
Houston in context
Houston sits on the coastal plain of southeast Texas, around 80 kilometres inland from Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. The city proper holds around 2.3 million residents, making it the fourth-largest in the US, with the wider Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land metropolitan area at 7.3 million. The terrain is exceptionally flat and the elevation barely rises above 15 metres across the entire municipality, producing significant flood vulnerability in the substantial hurricane seasons.
Timezone history of Houston
Houston is on Central Time, the same as Dallas and most of Texas. The position near the Gulf Coast and the city's role as a global energy hub mean operating clocks routinely span multiple zones: oilfield services schedule across Central, Eastern, Atlantic Standard (offshore platforms), and the Middle Eastern offset of GST. Federal DST applies on the standard second-Sunday-of-March schedule.
Working hours in Houston
Houston's working day is dominated by the energy industry, with the major oil-and-gas firms concentrated in downtown and the Energy Corridor to the west. Offices typically open at 07:00 or 07:30 to align with the European morning. The Texas Medical Center, the largest medical complex in the world by employee count, runs 24-hour operations across its 60-plus institutions. NASA's Johnson Space Center to the southeast keeps mission-control hours that follow spacecraft activity rather than the local day.