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International standards for dates and times
Current date and time expressed according to ISO 8601
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Date in
UTC
2026-04-24
Time in
UTC
08:08:56Z
T080856Z
Date and time
in
UTC
2026-04-24T08:08:56Z
20260424T080856Z
Date and time
with the offset
2026-04-23T20:08:56-12:00
UTC−12:00
2026-04-24T08:08:56+00:00
UTC+00:00
2026-04-24T20:08:56+12:00
UTC+12:00
Week
2026-W17
Week with weekday
2026-W17-5
Ordinal date
2026‐114
Time
Major concepts
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Eternity
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ISO 8601
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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
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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).
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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
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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.
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The standard notes that "The basic format should be avoided in
plain text
."
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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
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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
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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
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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".
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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
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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.
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Calendar dates
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YYYY-MM-DD
or
YYYYMMDD
YYYY-MM
but not
YYYYMM)
Only allowed in the (now superseded) 2000 version:
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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"
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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
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YYMMDD (still often used). The 2000 version also allowed writing the truncation
"--04-05"
to mean "April 5"
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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
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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
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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:
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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.
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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,
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it does not stipulate a preference except within International Standards, but with a preference for a
comma
according to ISO 8601:2004.
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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]".
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Time zone designators
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