Forex Market Hours Australia

Summary

Forex market hours are the weekday opening and closing times of the world’s main trading centres. This page uses one labelled reference convention: Sydney 07:00 to 16:00, Tokyo 09:00 to 18:00, London 08:00 to 16:00 and New York 08:00 to 17:00, all in each centre’s local time. You convert those local hours to your own city and calendar date, because the market is decentralised and no single clock governs it.

Daylight saving moves the converted times several times a year. Australia, the UK and the US change on different dates, so a session that sits at 17:00 Sydney time in early October can sit at 19:00 three weeks later. Provider availability, holidays, maintenance and platform server times are separate schedules checked with your broker.

The four major forex sessions in local time

The reference convention on this page comes from the FOREX.com session table, checked 2 October 2026, which lists Sydney 07:00 to 16:00, Tokyo 09:00 to 18:00, London 08:00 to 16:00 and New York 08:00 to 17:00 in local time. That same source notes the market is decentralised and that its provider’s availability runs on a different schedule, which is why the local-time cells are the only part used here.

Other published tables differ. ThinkMarkets lists London 08:00 to 17:00 in GMT, and Pepperstone’s session map lists Tokyo 08:00 to 17:00 local. Those differences are the reason this page labels one chosen convention rather than claiming a universal open and close. When a session time matters to your plan, use the dated reference table in the conversion tool on this page rather than a memorised number.

I prefer dated examples to blanket rules, so two worked conversions follow. On Friday 2 October 2026, Sydney local time, the London session runs 17:00 AEST to 01:00 AEST on Saturday 3 October, and New York runs 22:00 AEST to 07:00 AEST on Saturday 3 October. On Monday 26 October 2026, after the Australian and UK clock changes, London runs 19:00 AEDT to 03:00 AEDT on Tuesday 27 October and New York runs 23:00 AEDT to 08:00 AEDT on Tuesday 27 October. Same convention, different clocks, and planning has to follow the calendar.

Sydney session (07:00 to 16:00 Sydney time)

The Sydney session runs 07:00 to 16:00 in Sydney local time, and under this convention it opens the forex week on Monday morning. The local hours never change; what changes is the offset for any city that observes daylight saving.

The session matters most for AUD-focused traders. RBA cash rate decisions, ABS labour data and Chinese economic releases can land inside Sydney hours and can move AUD pairs directly, so your news calendar is the tool to check here. Not every relevant release falls inside the reference session, so the calendar, not the session label, decides what is worth watching. The currency pairs explained page covers which crosses sit in this family.

If your main pairs are AUD crosses, the Sydney session is where the local news flow concentrates. I would set my trading week by the Sydney clock under this convention, then convert anything that matters into the city I actually trade from.

Tokyo session (09:00 to 18:00 Tokyo time)

The Tokyo session runs 09:00 to 18:00 Tokyo local time under the reference convention. Tokyo does not observe daylight saving, so its converted hours shift only when Australian clocks move. On 2 October 2026 the Tokyo session overlaps Sydney through the middle of the Australian afternoon; once AEDT starts on 4 October 2026, the converted hours move an hour later on the clock.

JPY pairs sit at the centre of this session. Bank of Japan decisions and Japanese economic data can land inside Tokyo hours and can affect JPY crosses, so a news calendar is the practical tool for planning around them. Japanese public holidays also sit on that calendar, and a holiday in Tokyo is a reason to recheck your JPY plan rather than assume a normal session.

For Australian traders the Tokyo session is convenient because it overlaps the local business day, and Asia-Pacific price action can be followed without staying up late.

London session (08:00 to 16:00 London time)

The London session runs 08:00 to 16:00 London local time under the reference convention. Converted to Sydney time, London ran 17:00 AEST to 01:00 AEST on 2 October 2026, runs 18:00 to 02:00 AEDT from 5 October 2026, and runs 19:00 to 03:00 AEDT from 26 October 2026, after the UK ends BST on 25 October 2026. The UK’s clock changes for 2026 are 29 March and 25 October, per GOV.UK.

The session carries the European economic calendar: German data, UK inflation prints and ECB decisions can land inside London hours and can affect the relevant currencies. The planning input is the news calendar for the pairs you trade, not a memorised volatility window.

In my view, the London open is the most interesting single hour of the day for EUR and GBP pairs, because it is the first time the reference schedule puts a major European centre in session. I would prioritise it if I could only watch one window, and convert it for my city each week rather than trusting a fixed number.

New York session (08:00 to 17:00 New York time)

The New York session runs 08:00 to 17:00 New York local time under the reference convention. Converted, the Friday 2 October 2026 session ran 22:00 AEST to 07:00 AEST on Saturday 3 October. After the US ends DST on 1 November 2026, the Monday 2 November session starts Tuesday 3 November 2026 at 00:00 AEDT and closes that Tuesday at 09:00 AEDT, so the selected Australian Monday contains no New York interval at all. The US DST dates for 2026 are 8 March and 1 November, per the NIST published dates.

US data releases can sit inside this session, and major US releases can move USD pairs quickly, so risk settings belong in place before the release, not after. My preference is to plan any late-night US-data trade in advance and treat the converted session boundaries as the frame, not the signal. The conversion tells you when the window sits; your news calendar tells you whether anything is in it.

Best times to trade for Australian traders

The conventional session hours this tool converts cannot establish an optimal trading hour, because a reference open and close says nothing about conditions inside the window. A useful choice instead weighs the pair traded, the news scheduled for it, and the hours you can actually be at the desk.

A daytime trader in Brisbane and a night trader in Melbourne reach different answers from the same convention, because each city’s clock and daylight saving status depend on the selected date. Tokyo is still inside its reference session when Sydney closes and before London opens, so the schedule runs later into the Australian evening than the Sydney close alone suggests.

Our team’s September 2026 spread capture, published in our lowest spread forex brokers guide, compares measured broker figures, and our broker cost calculator turns those figures into a monthly total at a chosen volume. The hours tool on this page computes no trading cost and has no session-cost filter, so I would keep schedule planning and broker cost comparison as separate steps rather than treating either as a session pricing tool.

AUD pair high-volume hours

The hours tool on this page converts session intervals between timezones. It measures no pair volume, and the coincidence of a session with an hour on the clock establishes no volume peak, so a session label alone is not evidence that an AUD pair is busiest then. I would treat any unsourced volume claim about a specific pair with caution.

The practical planning input for AUD pairs is the relevant economic calendar. RBA and Australian data can land in Sydney hours, New Zealand data affects AUD/NZD, Japanese data affects AUD/JPY, and US data affects AUD/USD. Those calendars show when news relevant to a pair is scheduled, which is a planning input, not a volume measurement.

Australian DST and the schedule shift

Daylight saving in NSW starts at 02:00 AEST on 4 October 2026 and ends at 03:00 AEDT on 4 April 2027, per the NSW Government. NSW, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT observe it; Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia do not, per NSW timezone definitions. Eastern standard time is UTC+10 and eastern daylight time UTC+11; central daylight is UTC+10:30 and western stays UTC+08.

The practical effect is that converted session times depend on the selected city. On 5 October 2026, London’s 08:00 open converts to 18:00 in Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart (UTC+11), 17:00 in Brisbane (UTC+10), 17:30 in Adelaide (UTC+10:30), 16:30 in Darwin (UTC+09:30) and 15:00 in Perth (UTC+08).

The three DST regions change on different dates, which creates short windows where offsets are unusual. Between 25 October 2026, when the UK ends BST, and 1 November 2026, when the US ends DST, the UK and US sit on different rules, and converted times shift again on 1 November. My own rule is to work from a dated calendar rather than a memorised offset whenever a week crosses a change date, because offset arithmetic is where planning errors creep in.

Australian public holidays and forex hours

The decentralised market has no single holiday calendar, so trading on an Australian public holiday depends on the broker, the instrument and any maintenance window. Check your broker’s published holiday hours before planning a trade around any public holiday, Australian or overseas. A Japanese holiday matters for JPY pairs, a UK holiday for GBP pairs, a US holiday for USD pairs, and each provider publishes its own dealing schedule.

Broker server times and platform clocks

Platform server times are set by the broker, and they vary between providers and platforms. No universal offset, such as a fixed GMT+2 or GMT+3 rule, applies to every broker, and this page does not publish one. A platform displays its own server clock, so the reliable method is to read that clock directly and compare it with your local time.

For traders running EAs, the timezone definition matters more than the offset itself. Most strategies with session filters need a clear statement of which clock the filter uses: London local, broker server time, or local time. I would write that definition down before an EA runs overnight, because a filter set on the wrong clock silently trades the wrong window.

Session planning also connects to technical work. Our page on bullish chart patterns covers chart patterns for Australian traders, and the wider groundwork starts at our forex education hub.