Free tool
Gold trading sessions in your time zone
Gold trades almost around the clock, but not with the same activity all day. See when the Sydney, Tokyo, London and New York sessions open and close in your own time, which are open now, and when London and New York overlap.
Standard schedule; public holidays are not included. Your time zone comes from your browser and is not sent anywhere.
Session hours
Each session is defined in its own city's time, Monday to Friday, so the local hours stay the same all year. In UTC they move when that city changes its clocks.
| Session | Local time | UTC, January | UTC, July |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sydney | 07:00–16:00 Australia/Sydney | 20:00–05:00 | 21:00–06:00 |
| Tokyo | 09:00–18:00 Asia/Tokyo | 00:00–09:00 | 00:00–09:00 |
| London | 08:00–17:00 Europe/London | 08:00–17:00 | 07:00–16:00 |
| New York | 08:00–17:00 America/New_York | 13:00–22:00 | 12:00–21:00 |
Sydney opens on the previous calendar day in UTC (Sunday evening for the Monday session). The gold market itself is open from Sunday 18:00 to Friday 17:00 New York time, with a daily break from 17:00 to 18:00; your broker's hours may differ slightly.
What each session tends to mean for gold
- Sydney
- Opens the trading week. After the Sunday reopen, gold can show a gap from Friday's close; liquidity is thin and spreads are often wider than later in the day.
- Tokyo
- The Asian session. Moves are often smaller and ranges narrower; the Asian range is a reference many traders watch for the London open.
- London
- The centre of the physical gold market. The LBMA Gold Price auctions run at 10:30 and 15:00 London time, and activity usually picks up at the open.
- New York
- US economic data, usually released at 08:30 New York time, and the Federal Reserve move the dollar and yields, and with them gold. The first hours overlap with London.
These are tendencies, not rules: a single news release can make any hour the busiest of the week. Before sizing a trade, the XAUUSD lot size calculator keeps the loss at your stop-loss within your risk.
Questions
What are the trading hours for gold (XAUUSD)?
Spot gold trades almost around the clock from Sunday evening to Friday evening, New York time. Most platforms follow the gold futures day: open from Sunday 18:00 to Friday 17:00 New York time, with a short daily break from 17:00 to 18:00. Exact hours depend on your broker and on holidays.
Which session is the most active for gold?
Activity usually rises at the London open and again when New York opens, and the hours when London and New York are both open tend to be the busiest. The quieter hours are usually late in the New York afternoon and early in the Asian session. These are tendencies, not rules.
When do London and New York overlap?
With the session hours used here, the overlap runs from 08:00 New York time to the London close at 17:00 London time, which is usually 12:00 New York time. For a few weeks in March and in October or November the two countries change clocks on different dates, so the overlap moves by an hour. The clock on this page follows those changes.
Do the session times change with daylight saving time?
Each session is defined in its own city's time, so the local hours stay the same all year and the times in your zone move when either side changes clocks. Sydney moves its clocks in the opposite season to Europe and the United States.
Why do other websites show different session hours?
There is no official definition of a forex or gold session. Sources use different hours, for example 07:00 or 08:00 for the London open. Aureus uses the hours in the table above for every statistic it computes, so they stay consistent.
Aureus
Measure every session, minute by minute
Session Edge in Aureus measures each session on minute-level XAUUSD data since 2017: an automatic first-hour report after every open, and how often each pattern happened, with confidence intervals and sample sizes always shown.