What time is it in Costa Rica?

Costa Rica stays on UTC−6:00 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 6 hours behind UTC, and 1 hour behind New York.

Costa Rica is 1 hour behind New York and 2 hours ahead of Los Angeles. 9am in New York is 8:00 am in Costa Rica.

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 11 hours 41 minutes long in Costa Rica, and holding steady — within a minute of yesterday’s. The sun peaks at 11:20 am, 40 minutes before noon on the clock. A UTC offset is a promise that the sun is overhead at midday on one meridian, and Costa Rica sits 24 minutes of solar time east of UTC−6:00’s. The rest is the equation of time, which swings about a quarter of an hour either way across the year.

Costa Rica lies inside the tropics, so the sun passes directly overhead at noon twice a year — around April 15 and August 27 in 2026, when a vertical object casts almost no shadow. Nowhere outside the tropics ever sees that. The longest day is 12 hours 42 minutes and the shortest 11 hours 33 minutes, 70 minutes apart.

Costa Rica has kept UTC−6:00 since Saturday, March 14, 1992, when it moved from UTC−5:00. Before that its clocks read 1 hour ahead of what they read now.

On UTC−6:00 right now, the same clock as Costa Rica: