ISO 8601 - Wikipedia Jump to content From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia International standards for dates and times Current date and time expressed according to ISO 8601 refresh Date in UTC 2026-04-24 Time in UTC 07:19:48Z T071948Z Date and time in UTC 2026-04-24T07:19:48Z 20260424T071948Z Date and time with the offset 2026-04-23T19:19:48-12:00 UTC−12:00 2026-04-24T07:19:48+00:00 UTC+00:00 2026-04-24T19:19:48+12:00 UTC+12:00 Week 2026-W17 Week with weekday 2026-W17-5 Ordinal date 2026‐114 Time Major concepts Past Present Future Eternity of the world Fields of study Archaeology Chronology History Horology Metrology Paleontology Futurology Philosophy Presentism Eternalism Event Fatalism Religion Mythology Creation End time Day of Judgement Immortality Afterlife Reincarnation Kalachakra Measurement Standards ISO 8601 Metric Hexadecimal Science Naturalism Chronobiology Cosmogony Evolution Radiometric dating Ultimate fate of the universe Time in physics Related topics Motion Space Spacetime Time travel ISO 8601 is an international standard covering the worldwide exchange and communication of date and time -related data. It is maintained by the International Organization for Standardization (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 time intervals , and combinations thereof. 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 ), 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 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 edit The first edition of the ISO 8601 standard was published as ISO 8601:1988 in June 1988. It unified and replaced a number of older ISO standards on various aspects of date and time notation ISO 2014 Writing of calendar dates in all-numeric form , published April 1976 following ISO/R 2014 from 1971, originally introduced the hyphenated, most-to-least-significant order notation for Gregorian calendar dates with day of the month as an international standard. ISO 2015 Numbering of weeks , also from April 1976 with ISO R 2015 from 1971, first specified the rules for determining the ordinal number of a calendar week in a year and a day within a week. ISO 2711 Representation of ordinal dates , issued in January 1973, introduced the notation for the day of the year, which effectively treats only the final, 366th day of leap years differently. ISO 3307 Representation of time of the day , dated March 1975, standardized 24-hour wall clock times and their notation, but without handling time zones. ISO 4031 Representation of time of the day , published December 1978, added numerical offsets from UTC (or GMT back then). This first, unified edition was superseded by a second edition, ISO 8601:2000 , in 2000, that by a revised, third edition, ISO 8601:2004 , published on 1 December 2004, and that by ISO 8601-1:2019 and ISO 8601-2:2019 on 25 February 2019. All editions and parts of ISO 8601 and its predecessors were prepared by, 10 and are under the direct responsibility of, ISO Technical Committee TC 154. 11 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, 12 but is now the first of two parts. The other part, ISO 8601-2:2019, is entirely new. It defines various extensions such as uncertainties or parts of the Extended Date/Time Format (EDTF). 13 14 15 16 17 18 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. History of published editions and amendments Name Description ISO 8601:1988 Data elements and interchange formats – Information interchange – Representation of dates and times ISO 8601:1988/COR 1:1991 Data elements and interchange formats – Information interchange – Representation of dates and times – Technical Corrigendum 1 ISO 8601:2000 Data elements and interchange formats – Information interchange – Representation of dates and times ISO 8601:2004 Data elements and interchange formats – Information interchange – Representation of dates and times ISO 8601-1:2019 Date and time – Representations for information interchange – Part 1: Basic rules ISO 8601-2:2019 Date and time – Representations for information interchange – Part 2: Extensions ISO 8601-1:2019/Amd 1:2022 Date and time – Representations for information interchange – Part 1: Basic rules – Amendment 1: Technical corrections ISO 8601-2:2019/Amd 1:2025 Date and time – Representations for information interchange – Part 2: Extensions – Amendment 1: Canonical expressions, extensions to time scale components and date time arithmetic General principles edit 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 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 zeros Representations can be done in one of two formats – a basic format with a minimal number of separators or an extended format with separators added to enhance human readability. 19 20 The standard notes that "The basic format should be avoided in plain text ." 21 The separator used between date values (year, month, week, and day) is the hyphen , 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 "2009-01-06" in the extended format or as "20090106" in the basic format without ambiguity. For reduced precision 22 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 to the smallest time value in the representation. Dates edit April 2026 Week Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun W14 30 31 01 02 03 04 05 W15 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 W16 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 W17 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 W18 27 28 29 30 01 02 03 The standard uses the Gregorian calendar , which "serves as an international standard for civil use". 23 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 ) by explicit agreement of the parties involved. Such proleptic dates may not be adjusted to reconcile them with Julian dates. Years edit YYYY ISO 8601 prescribes, as a minimum, a four-digit year [YYYY] to 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 [0000] through [1582] shall only be used by mutual agreement of the partners in information interchange". 24 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. 25 An expanded year representation [±YYYYY] must have an agreed-upon number of extra year digits beyond the four-digit minimum, and it must be prefixed with a + or - sign 26 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. 27 Calendar dates edit YYYY-MM-DD or YYYYMMDD YYYY-MM but not YYYYMM) Only allowed in the (now superseded) 2000 version: 29 YY-MM-DD or YYMMDD -YY-MM or -YYMM --MM-DD or --MMDD --MM ---DD Calendar date representations are in the form shown in the adjacent box. [YYYY] indicates a four-digit year, 0000 through 9999. [MM] indicates a two-digit month of the year, 01 through 12. [DD] indicates a two-digit day of that month, 01 through 31. For example, "5 April 1981" may be represented as either "1981-04-05" 19 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 "1981-04" to mean "1981 April". One may simply write "1981" to refer to that year, "198" to refer to the decade from 1980 to 1989 inclusive, or "19" to refer to the century from 1900 to 1999 inclusive. Although the standard allows both the "YYYY-MM-DD" and YYYYMMDD formats for complete calendar date representations, if the day [DD] is omitted then only the YYYY-MM format is allowed. By disallowing dates of the form YYYYMM, the standard avoids confusion with the truncated representation 30 YYMMDD (still often used). The 2000 version also allowed writing the truncation "--04-05" to mean "April 5" 28 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 edit Main article: ISO week date YYYY-Www or YYYYWww YYYY-Www-D or YYYYWwwD Week date representations are in the formats as shown in the adjacent box. [YYYY] indicates the ISO week-numbering year which is slightly different from the traditional Gregorian calendar year (see below). [Www] is the week number prefixed by the letter , from W01 through W53. [D] 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 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: Monday 29 December 2008 is written "2009-W01-1" Sunday 3 January 2010 is written "2009-W53-7" Ordinal dates edit YYYY-DDD or YYYYDDD An ordinal date 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 [YYYY] indicates a year and [DDD] is the "day of year", from 001 through 365 (366 in leap years ). For example, "1981-04-05" is the same as "1981-095" 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 , a sequential count of the number of days since day 0 beginning 1 January 4713 BC Greenwich noon, Julian proleptic calendar (or noon on ISO date -4713-11-24 which uses the Gregorian proleptic calendar with a year 0000). Times edit Thh:mm:ss.sss or Thhmmss.sss Thh:mm:ss or Thhmmss Thh:mm.mmm or Thhmm.mmm Thh:mm or Thhmm Thh.hhh Thh In unambiguous contexts hh:mm:ss.sss or hhmmss.sss hh:mm:ss or hhmmss hh:mm or hhmm hh ISO 8601 uses the 24-hour clock system. As of ISO 8601-1:2019, the basic format is T[hh][mm][ss] and the extended format is T[hh]:[mm]:[ss]. Earlier versions omitted the T (representing time) in both formats. [hh] refers to a zero-padded hour between 00 and 24. [mm] refers to a zero-padded minute between 00 and 59. [ss] refers to a zero-padded second between 00 and 60 (where 60 is only used to denote an added leap second ). 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: 31 T[hh][mm] in basic format or T[hh]:[mm] in extended format , when seconds are omitted. T[hh], 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 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. 30 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 , either a comma or a dot on the baseline , is used as a separator between the time element and its fraction. (Following ISO 80000-1 according to ISO 8601:1-2019, 32 it does not stipulate a preference except within International Standards, but with a preference for a comma according to ISO 8601:2004. 33 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]". 34 Time zone designators edit