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ISO 8601 is an
international standard An international standard is a technical standard developed by one or more international standards organizations. International standards are available for consideration and use worldwide. The most prominent such organization is the International O ...
covering the worldwide exchange and communication of date and
time Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...
-related data. It is maintained by the
International Organization for Standardization The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. M ...
(ISO) and was first published in 1988, with updates in 1991, 2000, 2004, and 2019, and an amendment in 2022. The standard provides a well-defined, unambiguous method of representing calendar dates and times in worldwide communications, especially to avoid misinterpreting numeric dates and times when such data is transferred between countries with different conventions for writing numeric dates and times. ISO 8601 applies to these representations and formats: ''dates'', in the Gregorian calendar (including the proleptic Gregorian calendar); ''times'', based on the 24-hour timekeeping system, with optional
UTC offset The UTC offset is the difference in hours and minutes between Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and the standard time at a particular place. This difference is expressed with respect to UTC and is generally shown in the format , , or . So if the ti ...
; '' time intervals''; and combinations thereof.ISO 8601:2004 section 1 Scope The standard does not assign specific meaning to any element of the dates/times represented: the meaning of any element depends on the context of its use. Dates and times represented cannot use words that do not have a specified numerical meaning within the standard (thus excluding names of years in the
Chinese calendar The traditional Chinese calendar, dating back to the Han dynasty, is a lunisolar calendar that blends solar, lunar, and other cycles for social and agricultural purposes. While modern China primarily uses the Gregorian calendar for officia ...
), or that do not use computer characters (excludes images or sounds). In representations that adhere to the ISO 8601 ''interchange standard'', dates and times are arranged such that the greatest temporal term (typically a year) is placed at the left and each successively lesser term is placed to the right of the previous term. Representations must be written in a combination of
Arabic numerals The ten Arabic numerals (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9) are the most commonly used symbols for writing numbers. The term often also implies a positional notation number with a decimal base, in particular when contrasted with Roman numera ...
and the specific computer characters (such as "", ":", "T", "W", "Z") that are assigned specific meanings within the standard; that is, such commonplace descriptors of dates (or parts of dates) as "January", "Thursday", or "New Year's Day" are not allowed in interchange representations within the standard.


History

The first edition of the ISO 8601 standard was published as ''ISO 8601:1988'' in 1988. It unified and replaced a number of older ISO standards on various aspects of date and time notation:
ISO 2014 ISO 2014 is an international standard that was issued in April 1976, and superseded by ISO 8601 in June 1988. ISO 2014 was the standard that originally introduced the all-numeric date notation YYY M Dwith the digits in order starting with ...
, ISO 2015,
ISO 2711 ISO 2711 is an ISO standard describing formats for ordinal dates. The ISO is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. ISO 2711 was issued in 1973, and was superseded by ISO 8 ...
,
ISO 3307 ISO 3307 is an international standard for date and time representations issued by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The standard was issued in 1975, then was superseded by ISO 8601 ISO 8601 is an international standard ...
, and ISO 4031. It has been superseded by a second edition ''ISO 8601:2000'' in 2000, by a third edition ''ISO 8601:2004'' published on 1 December 2004, and withdrawn and revised by ''ISO 8601-1:2019'' and ''ISO 8601-2:2019'' on 25 February 2019. ISO 8601 was prepared by, and is under the direct responsibility of, ISO Technical Committee TC 154. ISO 2014, though superseded, is the standard that originally introduced the all-numeric date notation in most-to-least-significant order . The ISO week numbering system was introduced in ISO 2015, and the identification of days by ordinal dates was originally defined in ISO 2711. Issued in February 2019, the fourth revision of the standard ISO 8601-1:2019 represents slightly updated contents of the previous ISO 8601:2004 standard, whereas the new ISO 8601-2:2019 defines various extensions such as uncertainties or parts of the Extended Date/Time Format (EDTF). An amendment to ISO 8601-1 was published in October 2022 featuring minor technical clarifications and attempts to remove ambiguities in definitions. The most significant change, however, was the reintroduction of the "24:00:00" format to refer to the instant at the ''end'' of a calendar day. An amendment to ISO 8601-2 was published in January 2025.


General principles

*Date and time values are ordered from the largest to smallest unit of time: year, month (or week), day, hour, minute, second, and fraction of second. The
lexicographical order In mathematics, the lexicographic or lexicographical order (also known as lexical order, or dictionary order) is a generalization of the alphabetical order of the dictionaries to sequences of ordered symbols or, more generally, of elements of a ...
of the representation thus corresponds to chronological order, except for date representations involving negative years or time offset. This allows dates to be naturally sorted by, for example, file systems. *Each date and time value has a fixed number of digits that must be padded with
leading zero A leading zero is any 0 digit that comes before the first nonzero digit in a number string in positional notation.. For example, James Bond's famous identifier, 007, has two leading zeros. Any zeros appearing to the left of the first non-zero dig ...
s. *Representations can be done in one of two formatsa ''basic format'' with a minimal number of separators or an ''extended format'' with separators added to enhance human readability.ISO:
ISO 8601 — Date and time format
. .
The standard notes that "The basic format should be avoided in
plain text In computing, plain text is a loose term for data (e.g. file contents) that represent only characters of readable material but not its graphical representation nor other objects ( floating-point numbers, images, etc.). It may also include a lim ...
." The separator used between date values (year, month, week, and day) is the
hyphen The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes (en dash , em dash and others), which are wider, or with t ...
, while the colon is used as the separator between time values (hours, minutes, and seconds). For example, the 6th day of the 1st month of the year 2009 may be written as in the extended format or as "20090106" in the basic format without ambiguity. * For reduced precision,Earlier versions of ISO 8601 used the word ''accuracy'', not ''precision'', in the relevant section, e.g: 2.3.7 representation with reduced accuracy. This was corrected in ISO 8601-1:2019. any number of values may be dropped from any of the date and time representations, but in the order from the least to the most significant. For example, "2004-05" is a valid ISO 8601 date, which indicates May (the fifth month) 2004. This format will never represent the 5th day of an unspecified month in 2004, nor will it represent a time-span extending from 2004 into 2005. *If necessary for a particular application, the standard supports the addition of a
decimal fraction The decimal numeral system (also called the base-ten positional numeral system and denary or decanary) is the standard system for denoting integer and non-integer numbers. It is the extension to non-integer numbers (''decimal fractions'') of the ...
to the smallest time value in the representation.


Dates

The standard uses the
Gregorian calendar The Gregorian calendar is the calendar used in most parts of the world. It went into effect in October 1582 following the papal bull issued by Pope Gregory XIII, which introduced it as a modification of, and replacement for, the Julian cale ...
, which "serves as an international standard for civil use". ISO 8601 allows Gregorian dates from the introduction of the calendar on 15 October 1582. For earlier (pre-Gregorian) dates, the calendar may be extended before its introduction (the
proleptic Gregorian calendar The proleptic Gregorian calendar is produced by extending the Gregorian calendar backward to the dates preceding its official introduction in 1582. In nations that adopted the Gregorian calendar after its official and first introduction, dates occ ...
) by explicit agreement of the parties involved. Such proleptic dates may not be adjusted to reconcile them with Julian dates.


Years

ISO 8601 prescribes, as a minimum, a four-digit year YYYto avoid the year 2000 problem. It therefore represents years from 0000 to 9999, year 0000 being equal to 1 BC and all others AD, similar to astronomical year numbering. However, years before 1583 (the first full year following the introduction of the Gregorian calendar) are not automatically allowed by the standard. Instead, the standard states that "values in the range
000 Triple zero, Zero Zero Zero, 0-0-0 or variants may refer to: * 000 (emergency telephone number), the Australian emergency telephone number * 000, the size of several small List of screw drives, screw drives * 0-0-0, a Droid (Star Wars)#0-0-0, dro ...
through 582shall only be used by mutual agreement of the partners in information interchange". To represent years before 0000 or after 9999, the standard also permits the expansion of the year representation but only by prior agreement between the sender and the receiver. An expanded year representation �YYYYYmust have an agreed-upon number of extra year digits beyond the four-digit minimum, and it must be prefixed with a + or − sign instead of the more common AD/BC (or CE/BCE) notation; by convention 1 BC is labelled +0000, 2 BC is labeled −0001, and so on.


Calendar dates

Calendar date representations are in the form shown in the adjacent box. YYYindicates a four-digit year, 0000 through 9999. Mindicates a two-digit month of the year, 01 through 12. Dindicates a two-digit day of that month, 01 through 31. For example, "5 April 1981" may be represented as either in the ''extended format'' or "19810405" in the ''basic format''. The standard also allows for calendar dates to be written with reduced precision. For example, one may write to mean "1981 April". One may simply write "1981" to refer to that year, "198" to refer to the
decade A decade (from , , ) is a period of 10 years. Decades may describe any 10-year period, such as those of a person's life, or refer to specific groupings of calendar years. Usage Any period of ten years is a "decade". For example, the statement ...
from 1980 to 1989 inclusive, or "19" to refer to the
century A century is a period of 100 years or 10 decades. Centuries are numbered ordinally in English and many other languages. The word ''century'' comes from the Latin ''centum'', meaning ''one hundred''. ''Century'' is sometimes abbreviated as c. ...
from 1900 to 1999 inclusive. Although the standard allows both the and YYYYMMDD formats for complete calendar date representations, if the day Dis omitted then only the format is allowed. By disallowing dates of the form YYYYMM, the standard avoids confusion with the truncated representation YYMMDD (still often used). The 2000 version also allowed writing the truncation to mean "April 5" but the 2004 version does not allow omitting the year when a month is present. Examples: * 7 January 2000 can be written as "2000-01-07" or "20000107"


Week dates

Week date representations are in the formats as shown in the adjacent box. YYYindicates the ''ISO week-numbering year'' which is slightly different from the traditional
Gregorian calendar The Gregorian calendar is the calendar used in most parts of the world. It went into effect in October 1582 following the papal bull issued by Pope Gregory XIII, which introduced it as a modification of, and replacement for, the Julian cale ...
year (see below). wwis the '' week number'' prefixed by the letter ''W'', from W01 through W53. is the ''weekday number'', from 1 through 7, beginning with Monday and ending with Sunday. There are several mutually equivalent and compatible descriptions of week 01: * the week with the first
business day A business day normally means any day except a legal holiday. It may also mean a business day of operation, any of the days an organization operates. It depends on the local workweek which is dictated by local customs, religions, and business ...
in the starting year (considering that Saturdays, Sundays and 1 January are non-working days), * the week with the starting year's first Thursday in it (the formal ISO definition), * the week with 4 January in it, * the first week with the majority (four or more) of its days in the starting year, and * the week starting with the Monday in the period 29 December to 4 January. As a consequence, if 1 January is on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, it is in week 01. If 1 January is on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday, it is in week 52 or 53 of the previous year (there is no week 00). 28 December is always in the last week of its year. The week number can be described by counting the Thursdays: week 12 contains the 12th Thursday of the year. The ''ISO week-numbering year'' starts at the first day (Monday) of week 01 and ends at the Sunday before the new ISO year (hence without overlap or gap). It consists of 52 or 53 full weeks. The first ISO week of a year may have up to three days that are actually in the Gregorian calendar year that is ending; if three, they are Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Similarly, the last ISO week of a year may have up to three days that are actually in the Gregorian calendar year that is starting; if three, they are Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The Thursday of each ISO week is always in the Gregorian calendar year denoted by the ISO week-numbering year. Examples: * is written "" * is written ""


Ordinal dates

An ''
ordinal date An ordinal date is a calendar date typically consisting of a ''year'' and an ''ordinal number'', ranging between 1 and 366 (starting on January 1), representing the multiples of a ''day'', called day of the year or ordinal day number (also know ...
'' is an ordinal format for the multiples of a day elapsed since the start of year. It is represented as "YYYY-DDD" (or YYYYDDD), where YYYindicates a year and DDis the "day of year", from 001 through 365 (366 in
leap year A leap year (also known as an intercalary year or bissextile year) is a calendar year that contains an additional day (or, in the case of a lunisolar calendar, a month) compared to a common year. The 366th day (or 13th month) is added to keep t ...
s). For example, is the same as . This simple form is preferable for occasions when the arbitrary nature of week and month definitions are more of an impediment than an aid, for instance, when comparing dates from different calendars. This format is used with simple hardware systems that have a need for a date system, but where including full calendar calculation software may be a significant nuisance. This system is sometimes referred to as "Julian Date", but this can cause confusion with the astronomical
Julian day The Julian day is a continuous count of days from the beginning of the Julian period; it is used primarily by astronomers, and in software for easily calculating elapsed days between two events (e.g., food production date and sell by date). Th ...
, a sequential count of the number of days since day 0 beginning Greenwich noon, Julian proleptic calendar (or noon on ISO date which uses the Gregorian proleptic calendar with a year 0000).


Times

ISO 8601 uses the
24-hour clock The modern 24-hour clock is the convention of timekeeping in which the day runs from midnight to midnight and is divided into 24 hours. This is indicated by the hours (and minutes) passed since midnight, from to , with as an option to indicate ...
system. As of ISO 8601-1:2019, the ''basic format'' is T hmm] sand the ''extended format'' is T h m s Earlier versions omitted the T (representing time) in both formats. * hrefers to a zero-padded
hour An hour (symbol: h; also abbreviated hr) is a unit of time historically reckoned as of a day and defined contemporarily as exactly 3,600 seconds ( SI). There are 60 minutes in an hour, and 24 hours in a day. The hour was initially establis ...
between 00 and 24. * mrefers to a zero-padded
minute A minute is a unit of time defined as equal to 60 seconds. It is not a unit in the International System of Units (SI), but is accepted for use with SI. The SI symbol for minutes is min (without a dot). The prime symbol is also sometimes used i ...
between 00 and 59. * srefers to a zero-padded
second The second (symbol: s) is a unit of time derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes, and finally to 60 seconds each (24 × 60 × 60 = 86400). The current and formal definition in the International System of U ...
between 00 and 60 (where 60 is only used to denote an added
leap second A leap second is a one-second adjustment that is occasionally applied to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), to accommodate the difference between precise time (International Atomic Time (TAI), as measured by atomic clocks) and imprecise solar tim ...
). So a time might appear as either "T134730" in the ''basic format'' or "T13:47:30" in the ''extended format''. ISO 8601-1:2019 allows the T to be omitted in the extended format, as in "13:47:30", but only allows the T to be omitted in the basic format when there is no risk of confusion with date expressions. Either the seconds, or the minutes and seconds, may be omitted from the basic or extended time formats for greater brevity but decreased precision; the resulting reduced precision time formats are: *T hmm] in ''basic format'' or T h min ''extended format'', when seconds are omitted. *T h when both seconds and minutes are omitted. As of ISO 8601-1:2019/Amd 1:2022, "00:00:00" may be used to refer to ''
midnight Midnight is the transition time from one day to the next – the moment when the date changes, on the local official clock time for any particular jurisdiction. By clock time, midnight is the opposite of noon, differing from it by 12 hours. ...
'' corresponding to the instant at the beginning of a calendar day; and "24:00:00" to refer to midnight corresponding to the instant at the end of a calendar day. ISO 8601-1:2019 as originally published removed "24:00:00" as a representation for the end of day although it had been permitted in earlier versions of the standard. A decimal fraction may be added to the lowest order time element present in any of these representations. A
decimal mark alt=Four types of separating decimals: a) 1,234.56. b) 1.234,56. c) 1'234,56. d) ١٬٢٣٤٫٥٦., Both a full_stop.html" ;"title="comma and a full stop">comma and a full stop (or period) are generally accepted decimal separators for interna ...
, either a
comma The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. Some typefaces render it as a small line, slightly curved or straight, but inclined from the vertical; others give it the appearance of a miniature fille ...
or a dot on the baseline, is used as a separator between the time element and its fraction. (Following
ISO 80000-1 ISO/IEC 80000, ''Quantities and units'', is an international standard describing the International System of Quantities (ISQ). It was developed and promulgated jointly by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the Intern ...
according to ISO 8601:1-2019, it does not stipulate a preference except within International Standards, but with a preference for a
comma The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. Some typefaces render it as a small line, slightly curved or straight, but inclined from the vertical; others give it the appearance of a miniature fille ...
according to ISO 8601:2004.) For example, to denote "14 hours, 30 and one half minutes", do not include a seconds figure; represent it as "14:30,5", "T1430,5", "14:30.5", or "T1430.5". There is no limit on the number of decimal places for the decimal fraction. However, the number of decimal places needs to be agreed to by the communicating parties. For example, in Microsoft SQL Server, the precision of a decimal fraction is 3 for a DATETIME, i.e., "yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss mmm.


Time zone designators

Time zone A time zone is an area which observes a uniform standard time for legal, Commerce, commercial and social purposes. Time zones tend to follow the boundaries between Country, countries and their Administrative division, subdivisions instead of ...
s in ISO 8601 are represented as local time (with the location unspecified), as
UTC Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the primary time standard globally used to regulate clocks and time. It establishes a reference for the current time, forming the basis for civil time and time zones. UTC facilitates international communica ...
, or as an offset from UTC.


Local time (unqualified)

If no UTC relation information is given with a time representation, the time is assumed to be in local time. While it ''may'' be safe to assume local time when communicating in the same time zone, it is ambiguous when used in communicating across different time zones. Even within a single geographic time zone, some local times will be ambiguous if the region observes
daylight saving time Daylight saving time (DST), also referred to as daylight savings time, daylight time (Daylight saving time in the United States, United States and Daylight saving time in Canada, Canada), or summer time (British Summer Time, United Kingdom, ...
. It is usually preferable to indicate a time zone (zone designator) using the standard's notation.


Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)

If the time is in
UTC Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the primary time standard globally used to regulate clocks and time. It establishes a reference for the current time, forming the basis for civil time and time zones. UTC facilitates international communica ...
, add a ''Z'' directly after the time without a space. ''Z'' is the zone designator for the zero UTC offset. "09:30 UTC" is therefore represented as "09:30Z" or "T0930Z". "14:45:15 UTC" would be "14:45:15Z" or "T144515Z". The ''Z'' suffix in the ISO 8601 time representation is sometimes referred to as "Zulu time" or "Zulu meridian" because the same letter is used to designate the Zulu time zone. However the ACP 121 standard that defines the list of military time zones makes no mention of UTC and derives the "Zulu time" from the
Greenwich Mean Time Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is the local mean time at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, counted from midnight. At different times in the past, it has been calculated in different ways, including being ...
which was formerly used as the international civil time standard. GMT is no longer precisely defined by the scientific community and can refer to either UTC or UT1 depending on context.


Time offsets from UTC

The
UTC offset The UTC offset is the difference in hours and minutes between Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and the standard time at a particular place. This difference is expressed with respect to UTC and is generally shown in the format , , or . So if the ti ...
is appended directly to the time instead of "Z" suffix above; other nautical time zone letters are not used. The offset is applied to
UTC Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the primary time standard globally used to regulate clocks and time. It establishes a reference for the current time, forming the basis for civil time and time zones. UTC facilitates international communica ...
to get the
civil time In modern usage, civil time refers to statutory time as designated by civilian authorities. Modern civil time is generally national standard time in a time zone at a UTC offset, fixed offset from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), possibly adjusted ...
in the designated
time zone A time zone is an area which observes a uniform standard time for legal, Commerce, commercial and social purposes. Time zones tend to follow the boundaries between Country, countries and their Administrative division, subdivisions instead of ...
in the format '± h m, '± hmm]', or '± h. A negative
UTC offset The UTC offset is the difference in hours and minutes between Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and the standard time at a particular place. This difference is expressed with respect to UTC and is generally shown in the format , , or . So if the ti ...
describes a time zone west of the
prime meridian A prime meridian is an arbitrarily chosen meridian (geography), meridian (a line of longitude) in a geographic coordinate system at which longitude is defined to be 0°. On a spheroid, a prime meridian and its anti-meridian (the 180th meridian ...
where the civil time is behind UTC. So the zone designation for
New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...
(on
standard time Standard time is the synchronization of clocks within a geographical region to a single time standard, rather than a local mean time standard. Generally, standard time agrees with the local mean time at some meridian that passes through the r ...
) would be "−05:00","−0500", or "−05". Conversely, a positive UTC offset describes a time zone east of the prime meridian where the civil time is ahead of
UTC Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the primary time standard globally used to regulate clocks and time. It establishes a reference for the current time, forming the basis for civil time and time zones. UTC facilitates international communica ...
. So the zone designation for
Cairo Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, L ...
will be "+02:00","+0200", or "+02". A time zone where the civil time coincides with UTC is always designated as positive, though the offset is zero (see related specifications below). So the zone designation for
London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
(on
standard time Standard time is the synchronization of clocks within a geographical region to a single time standard, rather than a local mean time standard. Generally, standard time agrees with the local mean time at some meridian that passes through the r ...
) would be " +00:00", " +0000", or " +00".


=Additional examples

= * " −10:00" for
Honolulu Honolulu ( ; ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, located in the Pacific Ocean. It is the county seat of the Consolidated city-county, consolidated City and County of Honol ...
* " −06:00" for
Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
on
standard time Standard time is the synchronization of clocks within a geographical region to a single time standard, rather than a local mean time standard. Generally, standard time agrees with the local mean time at some meridian that passes through the r ...
, or
Denver Denver ( ) is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Consolidated city and county, consolidated city and county, the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Colorado, most populous city of the U.S. state of ...
on
daylight saving time Daylight saving time (DST), also referred to as daylight savings time, daylight time (Daylight saving time in the United States, United States and Daylight saving time in Canada, Canada), or summer time (British Summer Time, United Kingdom, ...
* " −03:00" for
Brasília Brasília ( ; ) is the capital city, capital of Brazil and Federal District (Brazil), Federal District. Located in the Brazilian highlands in the country's Central-West Region, Brazil, Central-West region, it was founded by President Juscelino ...
* " +01:00" for
London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
on
British Summer Time During British Summer Time (BST), civil time in the United Kingdom is advanced one hour forward of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), in effect changing the time zone from UTC+00:00 to UTC+01:00, so that mornings have one hour less daylight, and eve ...
* " +04:00" for
Dubai Dubai (Help:IPA/English, /duːˈbaɪ/ Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''doo-BYE''; Modern Standard Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic: ; Emirati Arabic, Emirati Arabic: , Romanization of Arabic, romanized: Help:IPA/English, /diˈbej/) is the Lis ...
* " +05:30" for
India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
* " +09:00" for
Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
See
List of UTC offsets This is a list of the UTC time offsets, showing the difference in hours and minutes from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), from the westernmost (−12:00) to the easternmost (+14:00). It includes countries and regions that observe them during sta ...
for other
UTC offset The UTC offset is the difference in hours and minutes between Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and the standard time at a particular place. This difference is expressed with respect to UTC and is generally shown in the format , , or . So if the ti ...
s.


=Other time offset specifications

= It is not permitted to state a zero value time offset with a negative sign, as "−00:00", "−0000", or "−00". The section dictating sign usage states that a plus sign must be used for a positive or zero value, and a minus sign for a negative value. A plus-minus-sign () may also be used if it is available. Contrary to this rule, RFC 3339, which is otherwise a profile of ISO 8601, permits the use of "−00" with the same denotation as "+00" but a differing connotation: an unknown
UTC offset The UTC offset is the difference in hours and minutes between Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and the standard time at a particular place. This difference is expressed with respect to UTC and is generally shown in the format , , or . So if the ti ...
. To represent a negative offset, ISO 8601 specifies using a
minus sign The plus sign () and the minus sign () are mathematical symbols used to denote positive and negative functions, respectively. In addition, the symbol represents the operation of addition, which results in a sum, while the symbol represent ...
(). If the interchange character set is limited and does not have a minus sign character, then the
hyphen-minus The symbol , known in Unicode as hyphen-minus, is the form of hyphen most commonly used in digital documents. On most keyboards, it is the only character that resembles a minus sign or a dash, so it is also used for these. The name ''hyphen-mi ...
should be used ().
ASCII ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable character, printable and 33 control character, control c ...
does not have a minus sign, so its hyphen-minus character (code 4510) would be used. If the character set has a minus sign, such as in
Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
, then that character should be used. The HTML character entity invocation for is −. ISO 8601-2:2019 allows for general durations for time offsets. For example, more precision can be added to the time offset with the format '


Combined date and time representations

A single point in time can be represented by concatenating a complete date expression, the letter ''"T"'' as a delimiter, and a valid time expression. For example, . In ISO 8601:2004 it was permitted to omit the ''"T"'' character by mutual agreement as in , but this provision was removed in ISO 8601-1:2019. Separating date and time parts with other characters such as space is not allowed in ISO 8601, but allowed in its profile RFC 3339. If a time zone designator is required, it follows the combined date and time. For example, or . Either basic or extended formats may be used, but both date and time must use the same format. The date expression may be calendar, week, or ordinal, and must use a complete representation. The time may be represented using a specified reduced precision format.


Durations

Durations define the amount of intervening time in a time interval and are represented by the format P T or P as shown on the aside. In these representations, the is replaced by the value for each of the date and time elements that follow the Leading zeros are not required, but the maximum number of digits for each element should be agreed to by the communicating parties. The capital letters ''P'', ''Y'', ''M'', ''W'', ''D'', ''T'', ''H'', ''M'', and ''S'' are designators for each of the date and time elements and are not replaced. *''P'' is the duration designator (for ''period'') placed at the start of the duration representation. **''Y'' is the year designator that follows the value for the number of calendar years. **''M'' is the month designator that follows the value for the number of calendar months. **''W'' is the week designator that follows the value for the number of weeks. **''D'' is the day designator that follows the value for the number of calendar days. *''T'' is the time designator that precedes the time components of the representation. **''H'' is the hour designator that follows the value for the number of hours. **''M'' is the minute designator that follows the value for the number of minutes. **''S'' is the second designator that follows the value for the number of seconds. For example, "P3Y6M4DT12H30M5S" represents a duration of "three years, six months, four days, twelve hours, thirty minutes, and five seconds". Date and time elements including their designator may be omitted if their value is zero, and lower-order elements may also be omitted for reduced precision. For example, "P23DT23H" and "P4Y" are both acceptable duration representations. However, at least one element must be present, thus "P" is not a valid representation for a duration of 0 seconds. "PT0S" or "P0D", however, are both valid and represent the same duration. To resolve ambiguity, "P1M" is a one-month duration and "PT1M" is a one-minute duration (note the time designator, T, that precedes the time value). The smallest value used may also have a decimal fraction, as in "P0.5Y" to indicate half a year. This decimal fraction may be specified with either a
comma The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. Some typefaces render it as a small line, slightly curved or straight, but inclined from the vertical; others give it the appearance of a miniature fille ...
or a
full stop The full stop ( Commonwealth English), period (North American English), or full point is a punctuation mark used for several purposes, most often to mark the end of a declarative sentence (as distinguished from a question or exclamation). A ...
, as in "P0,5Y" or "P0.5Y". The standard does not prohibit date and time values in a duration representation from exceeding their "carry over points" except as noted below. Thus, "PT36H" could be used as well as "P1DT12H" for representing the same duration. But keep in mind that "PT36H" is not the same as "P1DT12H" when switching from or to
Daylight saving time Daylight saving time (DST), also referred to as daylight savings time, daylight time (Daylight saving time in the United States, United States and Daylight saving time in Canada, Canada), or summer time (British Summer Time, United Kingdom, ...
. Alternatively, a format for duration based on combined date and time representations may be used by agreement between the communicating parties either in the basic format PYYYYMMDDThhmmss or in the extended format . For example, the first duration shown above would be . However, individual date and time values cannot exceed their moduli (e.g. a value of 13 for the month or 25 for the hour would not be permissible). The standard describes a duration as part of time intervals, which are discussed in the next section. The duration format on its own is ambiguous regarding the total number of days in a calendar year and calendar month. The number of seconds in a calendar day is also ambiguous because of
leap second A leap second is a one-second adjustment that is occasionally applied to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), to accommodate the difference between precise time (International Atomic Time (TAI), as measured by atomic clocks) and imprecise solar tim ...
s. For example "P1M" on its own could be 28, 29, 30, or 31 days. There is no ambiguity when used in a time interval. Using example "P2M" duration of two calendar months: * interval 2003-02-15T00:00:00Z/P2M ends two calendar months later at 2003-04-15T00:00:00Z which is 59 days later * interval 2003-07-15T00:00:00Z/P2M ends two calendar months later at 2003-09-15T00:00:00Z which is 62 days later The duration format (or a subset thereof) is widely used independent of time intervals, as with the Java 8 Duration class which supports a subset of the duration format.


Time intervals

A time interval is the intervening time between two time points. The amount of intervening time is expressed by a duration (as described in the previous section). The two time points (start and end) are expressed by either a combined date and time representation or just a date representation. There are four ways to express a time interval: #Start and end, such as "2007-03-01T13:00:00Z/2008-05-11T15:30:00Z" #Start and duration, such as "2007-03-01T13:00:00Z/P1Y2M10DT2H30M" #Duration and end, such as "P1Y2M10DT2H30M/2008-05-11T15:30:00Z" #Duration only, such as "P1Y2M10DT2H30M", with additional context information Of these, the first three require two values separated by an ''interval designator'' which is usually a solidus (more commonly referred to as a
forward slash The slash is a slanting line punctuation mark . It is also known as a stroke, a solidus, a forward slash and several other historical or technical names. Once used as the equivalent of the modern period and comma, the slash is now used to r ...
"/"). Section 3.2.6 of ISO 8601-1:2019 notes that "A solidus may be replaced by a double hyphen --"by mutual agreement of the communicating partners", and previous versions used notations like "2000--2002". Use of a double hyphen instead of a solidus allows inclusion in computer
filename A filename or file name is a name used to uniquely identify a computer file in a file system. Different file systems impose different restrictions on filename lengths. A filename may (depending on the file system) include: * name – base ...
s; in common operating systems, a solidus is a reserved character and is not allowed in a filename. For / expressions, if any elements are missing from the end value, they are assumed to be the same as for the start value including the time zone. This feature of the standard allows for concise representations of time intervals. For example, the date of a two-hour meeting including the start and finish times could be shown as "2007-12-14T13:30/15:30", where "/15:30" implies "/2007-12-14T15:30" (the same date as the start), or the beginning and end dates of a monthly billing period as "2008-02-15/03-14", where "/03-14" implies "/2008-03-14" (the same year as the start). If greater precision is desirable to represent the time interval, then more time elements can be added to the representation. An interval denoted can start at any time on and end at any time on , whereas includes the start and end times. To explicitly include all of the start and end dates, the interval would be represented as .


Repeating intervals

Repeating intervals are specified in clause "4.5 Recurring time interval". They are formed by adding "R " to the beginning of an interval expression, where ''R'' is used as the letter itself and is replaced by the number of repetitions. Leaving out the value for or specifying a value of -1, means an unbounded number of repetitions. A value of 0 for means the interval is not repeated. If the interval specifies the start (forms 1 and 2 above), then this is the start of the repeating interval. If the interval specifies the end but not the start (form 3 above), then this is the end of the repeating interval. For example, to repeat the interval of "P1Y2M10DT2H30M" five times starting at , use .


Truncated representations (deprecated)

ISO 8601:2000 allowed truncation (by agreement), where leading components of a date or time are omitted. Notably, this allowed two-digit years to be used as well as the ambiguous formats YY-MM-DD and YYMMDD. This provision was removed in ISO 8601:2004. The first and seventh examples given above omit the leading - for century. Other formats have one leading - per omitted century, year, month, week, hour and minute as necessary to disambiguate the format.


Standardised extensions

ISO 8601-2:2019 defines a set of standardised extensions to the ISO 8601 date and time formats.


Extended Date/Time Format (EDTF)

The EDTF is given as an example of a profile of ISO 8601 in Part 2. It comes in three levels, where level 0 is a subset of Part 1 restricted to extended month-day notation, CCYY-MM-DD, similar to RFC 3339, and levels 1 and 2 build upon that. EDTF is mostly tailored to bibliographic and historiographic needs. Some of its features are: * Uncertain and approximate qualifiers, '?' and '~', as well as their combined used, '%'; they can be applied to the whole date or to individual components. * Time intervals with an open (unbounded) or unknown end or start, e.g. "../2025" or "2024/". * Exponential ('E') and significant figure ('S') notation in years with a new 'Y' prefix, e.g. "Y-1.25E6S2". * Special "month" values indicating sub-year groupings such as seasons and quarters, e.g. "2025-26" for summer in the Northern hemisphere. * Syntax for serializing a list of dates within brackets '[]' for single choices or braces '' for inclusive lists. The EDTF features are described in the "Date and Time Extensions" section of ISO 8601-2:2019, and the profile itself is found as Annex A. It is virtually identical to the prior specification pioneered by the US Library of Congress.


Repeat rules for recurring time intervals

ISO 8601-2:2019 also defines a format to constrain repeating intervals based on syntax from
iCalendar The Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification (iCalendar) is a media type which allows users to store and exchange calendaring and scheduling information such as events, to-dos, journal entries, and free/busy information, ...
, i.e. IETF RFC 5545.


Implementations

GNU CoreUtils The GNU Core Utilities or coreutils is a collection of GNU software that implements many standard, Unix-based shell commands. The utilities generally provide POSIX compliant interface when the environment variable is set, but otherwise offers a ...
's date command has implement a
--iso-8601 option
among other formating patterns: $ date --iso-8601=ns 2025-02-16T12:03:17,646296349+01:00 $ date -u --rfc-3339=ns 2025-02-16 10:58:44.966864492+00:00 $ date -u +"%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%6NZ" 2025-02-16T10:58:44.965071Z


Usage

On the
Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...
, the
World Wide Web Consortium The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working together in ...
(W3C) uses the
IETF The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet standard, Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster ...
standard based on ISO 8601 in defining a profile of the standard that restricts the supported date and time formats to reduce the chance of error and the complexity of software. The very simple specification is based on a draft of the RFC 3339 mentioned below. ISO 8601 is referenced by several specifications, but the full range of options of ISO 8601 is not always used. For example, the various
electronic program guide Electronic programming guides (EPGs) and interactive programming guides (IPGs) are menu-based systems that provide users of television, radio, and other media applications with continuously updated menus that display scheduling information fo ...
standards for TV, digital radio, etc. use several forms to describe points in time and durations. The ID3 audio meta-data specification also makes use of a subset of ISO 8601. The X.690 encoding standard's GeneralizedTime makes use of another subset of ISO 8601.


Commerce

As of 2006, the
ISO week date The ISO week date system is effectively a leap week calendar system that is part of the ISO 8601 date and time standard issued by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) since 1988 (last revised in 2019) and, before that, it wa ...
appears in its basic form on major brand commercial packaging in the United States. Its appearance depended on the particular packaging, canning, or bottling plant more than any particular brand. The format is particularly useful for quality assurance, so that production errors can be readily traced.


RFCs

IETF RFC 3339 defines a profile of ISO 8601 for use in
Internet protocols The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...
and
standards Standard may refer to: Symbols * Colours, standards and guidons, kinds of military signs * Standard (emblem), a type of a large symbol or emblem used for identification Norms, conventions or requirements * Standard (metrology), an object t ...
. It explicitly excludes durations and dates before the
common era Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE) are year notations for the Gregorian calendar (and its predecessor, the Julian calendar), the world's most widely used calendar era. Common Era and Before the Common Era are alternatives to the ...
. The more complex formats such as week numbers and ordinal days are not permitted. RFC 3339 deviates from ISO 8601 in allowing a zero time zone offset to be specified as "-00:00", which ISO 8601 forbids. RFC 3339 intends "-00:00" to carry the connotation that it is not stating a preferred time zone, whereas the conforming "+00:00" or any non-zero offset connotes that the offset being used is preferred. This convention regarding "-00:00" is derived from earlier RFCs, such as RFC 2822 which uses it for timestamps in
email Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...
headers. RFC 2822 made no claim that any part of its timestamp format conforms to ISO 8601, and so was free to use this convention without conflict. Building upon the foundations of RFC 3339, the
IETF The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet standard, Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster ...
introduced the Internet Extended Date/Time Format (IXDTF) in RFC 9557. This format extends the timestamp representation to include additional information such as an associated time zone name. The inclusion of time zone names is particularly useful for applications that need to account for events like daylight saving time transitions. Furthermore, IXDTF maintains compatibility with pre-existing syntax for attaching time zone names to timestamps, providing a standardized and flexible approach to timestamp representation on the internet. Example: 1996-12-19T16:39:57-08:00 merica/Los_Angeles/code>


Adoption as national standards


See also

*
Astronomical year numbering Astronomical year numbering is based on AD/ CE year numbering, but follows normal decimal integer numbering more strictly. Thus, it has a year 0; the years before that are designated with negative numbers and the years after that are designated ...
*
Date and time representation by country Different conventions exist around the world for date and time representation, both written and spoken. Differences Differences can exist in: *The calendar that is used for Date format. *The order in which the year, month, and day are repre ...
* List of date formats by country *
Chronometry Chronometry or horology () is the science studying the measurement of time and timekeeping. Chronometry enables the establishment of standard measurements of time, which have applications in a broad range of social and scientific areas. ''Hor ...
* ISO 8601 and computing differences between dates on
Wikiversity Wikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project that supports learning communities, their learning materials, and resulting activities. It differs from Wikipedia in that it offers tutorials and other materials for the fostering of learning, rather ...


Notes and references


External links


ISO's catalog entry for ISO 8601:2004

Preview of ISO 8601-1:2019
from ISO
Preview of ISO 8601-2:2019
from ISO
The 2016 prototype of ISO 8601-1 (ISO/TC 154 N) (archived)

The 2016 prototype of ISO 8601-2 (ISO/TC 154 N) (archived)

Use international date format (ISO) – Quality Web Tips
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

by Dr. Markus Kuhn from
Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...
*
The Mathematics of the ISO 8601 Calendar
from the website of R.H. van Gent of
Utrecht University Utrecht University (UU; , formerly ''Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht'') is a public university, public research university in Utrecht, Netherlands. Established , it is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands. In 2023, it had an enrollment of ...

W3C "NOTE": Date and Time Formats
specifying a profile of ISO 8601:1988
RFC 3339 vs ISO 8601
Venn diagram A Venn diagram is a widely used diagram style that shows the logical relation between set (mathematics), sets, popularized by John Venn (1834–1923) in the 1880s. The diagrams are used to teach elementary set theory, and to illustrate simple ...
illustrating the difference between the two standards. Implementation overview
ISO 8601 Implementation Around The World (1998)
{{ISO standards Calendaring standards Date and time representation #08601 Specific calendars Time measurement systems