USA-Colombia time zone difference

Of all the corridors a US team works across, Colombia is one of the friendliest. There is no half-a-world gap to fight, no awkward middle-of-the-night handoff. The clocks are either identical or one hour apart, which is why Colombia has become a leading nearshore partner for US companies.

What is the offset?

Colombia keeps a single time zone, Colombia Time, at UTC-5, and it never changes for daylight saving. The US does, so the gap depends only on the US season and which US coast you are on.

In US winter, US Eastern is on EST (UTC-5), which matches Colombia exactly. In US summer, the US East switches to EDT (UTC-4), so Colombia falls an hour behind. Against US Central the relationship simply slides by one hour: same in summer, an hour ahead in winter.

The shared working day

Because the gap is never more than an hour, almost the whole business day lines up. Here is how common US Eastern hours convert during US summer, when Colombia is one hour behind.

In US winter the two clocks match, so 9 AM, 12 PM and 5 PM ET are exactly 9 AM, 12 PM and 5 PM in Colombia. Either way, a 9-to-5 meeting on the East Coast lands squarely inside the Colombian working day.

What about Central time?

From the US Central zone the corridor is just as kind. In US summer Colombia is on the same clock as Central, so 9 AM CT is 9 AM in Colombia. In US winter Colombia is one hour ahead, so 9 AM CT is 10 AM in Colombia. There is never a working hour that falls outside both sides' day.

Stop checking this every time

Even when the gap is small, the daylight-saving flip is exactly where recurring meetings slip an hour out of place. Atlas keeps Colombia and your own city side by side in your Mac menu bar, shades the hours when both sides are awake, and writes any meeting to your calendar in both local times. For wider teams, our guide to finding your team's overlap window shows how to do this across more than two cities.