Current time in São Paulo, Brazil
The current local time in São Paulo is shown below. São Paulo observes BRT.
Daylight saving time
São Paulo does not observe daylight saving time. The local offset is fixed year-round.
Sunrise & sunset today
Timezone facts
- Timezone
- America/Sao_Paulo
- Standard abbreviation
- BRT
- Observes daylight saving
- No
- Country
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- Business hours
- 09:00 – 18:00 local
São Paulo in context
São Paulo is the largest city in the Americas by population and the financial capital of Brazil, sitting on a plateau at around 760 metres elevation about 70 kilometres inland from the Atlantic coast. The municipal population is around 12.4 million, with the wider metropolitan area extending to nearly 22 million across 39 surrounding municipalities. The city's compact dense centre gives way to the largely residential western and southern zones, and to the industrial belt stretching toward the ABC region of São Bernardo do Campo and Santo André.
Timezone history of São Paulo
Brazil sits across three mainland timezones, with São Paulo and most of the populated southeast on UTC-3 as Brasília Time, and progressively earlier offsets running west into the Amazon. Daylight saving was abolished nationally in 2019 after a government-commissioned study found the practice no longer delivered the energy savings that had motivated it in the 1980s, and São Paulo has remained on UTC-3 year-round since. The change has the practical effect of widening the time gap with most of North America and Europe during the southern summer.
Working hours in São Paulo
São Paulo's working day runs from around 09:00 to 18:00 with a long lunch break of an hour or more, often taken in a corner padaria or one of the city's many self-service per-kilo buffets. Carnaval, although celebrated nationally, is observed as four full days off in São Paulo (the Monday and Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, plus surrounding bridge days), with most offices closing entirely. The combination of festas juninas in June, Carnaval in February or March, and Christmas-into-New Year closures produces three major annual disruption clusters.