What time is it in Cook Islands?

Cook Islands stays on UTC−10:00 all year. Its offset from UTC never moves, so its relationship to places that do change shifts twice a year instead — which is usually why someone checks. Right now it is 10 hours behind UTC, and 5 hours behind New York.

Rarotonga is 5 hours behind New York and 2 hours behind Los Angeles. 9am in New York is 4:00 am in Rarotonga.

To convert a specific time rather than read the current one, the converter shows both directions with the next clock change for each.

The day is 13 hours 5 minutes long in Rarotonga, and gaining 1 minute a day. The sun peaks at 12:23 pm, 23 minutes after noon on the clock. A UTC offset is a promise that the sun is overhead at midday on one meridian, and Rarotonga sits 39 minutes of solar time west of UTC−10:00’s. The rest is the equation of time, which swings about a quarter of an hour either way across the year.

Rarotonga lies inside the tropics, so the sun passes directly overhead at noon twice a year — around January 14 and November 27 in 2026, when a vertical object casts almost no shadow. Nowhere outside the tropics ever sees that. The longest day is 13 hours 26 minutes and the shortest 10 hours 50 minutes, 155 minutes apart.

Cook Islands has kept UTC−10:00 since Saturday, March 2, 1991, when it moved from UTC−9:30. Before that its clocks read 30 minutes ahead of what they read now.

On UTC−10:00 right now, the same clock as Cook Islands: