Forex Market Hours: When the Forex Market Opens, Closes and Actually Moves

The forex market being open and the forex market moving are different things, and this page is about the second: which session trades which pairs, when liquidity is deep enough for the spread to be tight, why the same session has three clock times depending on the month, and when you should not be trading at all. The live clock below shows what is open right now in your own timezone, with the next open counted down.

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What time does the forex market open?

The forex market opens at 5:00 pm New York time on Sunday — which is 7:00 am Monday in Sydney, where the trading week begins — and runs continuously until 5:00 pm New York time on Friday. There is no opening bell: it is a network of banks and dealers across time zones, so "open" means that somewhere a major financial centre is trading. In UTC that is roughly Sunday 21:00 (22:00 in winter) to Friday 21:00 (22:00 in winter); in London, Sunday 10 pm to Friday 10 pm. The market is closed on weekends and, in practice, thin on major public holidays in the US and UK even though it is technically open.

That is the answer to the question as asked. The more useful answer is that the forex market being open and the forex market moving are different things, and this page is about the second: which session trades which pairs, when the liquidity is deep enough for the spread to be tight, why the same session has three different clock times depending on the month, and when you should not be trading at all. The live clock below shows what is open right now in your own timezone.

The forex trading week, hour by hour

The 24-hour-week illustration in this guide lays out the whole week as four overlapping session bands from Sunday 5 pm ET to Friday 5 pm ET:

◆ Diagram · the 24-hour week · four sessions, two closed gaps

• Sydney — opens first each day, 5:00 pm–2:00 am ET (10:00 pm–7:00 am UTC in winter). Thin, AUD and NZD pairs only, wide spreads on everything else.
• Tokyo — 7:00 pm–4:00 am ET (00:00–09:00 UTC). Yen pairs and the Asian crosses; EUR/USD often ranges 20–30 pips for the whole session.
• London — 3:00 am–12:00 pm ET (08:00–17:00 UTC). The largest share of daily volume, around 38% by the BIS survey; EUR, GBP and CHF pairs come alive; the London open is where the Asian range gets swept.
• New York — 8:00 am–5:00 pm ET (13:00–22:00 UTC). USD/CAD, the US data releases at 8:30 am ET, and the overlap with London.

The two shaded gaps in the illustration are the only times the market is closed: Friday 5 pm to Sunday 5 pm New York, and — depending on your broker — a one- to five-minute daily settlement break at 5 pm ET when swaps are charged and spreads spike.

What time does forex open on Sunday?

5:00 pm Eastern Time. Most brokers open their platforms a few minutes after that; some quote from 5:05 pm; a few open at 5:00 pm sharp with spreads two to five times their weekday width for the first half hour. The Sunday open is the moment weekend news is priced, so gaps are common — a gap of 20–50 pips on a major after a weekend event is ordinary, and stop orders left over the weekend fill at the gap, not at the level.

Three practical rules for the Sunday open: do not hold weekend positions without a stop you can afford to see gapped; do not trade the first thirty minutes unless the spread has normalised; and if your broker shows "market closed" on Sunday afternoon, check the timezone of the platform clock before assuming it is broken — it is almost always displaying UTC or the broker's local time.

When does the forex market close on Friday?

5:00 pm Eastern Time. Liquidity thins from around 12:00 pm ET as London closes and traders flatten ahead of the weekend; the last two hours of Friday are among the least liquid of the week, with the exception of a data release. Swing traders should decide by Friday noon whether they are holding through the weekend; day traders should have no reason to be in a position after London closes.

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Session times in EST, GMT and UTC

The three-clocks illustration in this guide shows the same four sessions in Eastern Time, GMT and UTC, and the reason there are three columns is the reason most session tables online are wrong: daylight saving. New York moves its clocks in March and November; London in March and October; Sydney in October and April, in the opposite direction. UTC never moves. So the London session is 08:00–17:00 UTC in summer and 08:00–17:00 local all year but 08:00–17:00 GMT only in winter; and the overlap with New York shifts by an hour for a few weeks each spring and autumn when the two countries have changed at different dates.

◆ Diagram · session times in three clocks · the daylight-saving trap

The rule that keeps you right: write your sessions down in UTC once, and convert to your local time with the live clock rather than a memorised table.

Japan does not observe daylight saving, so Tokyo is the only session whose UTC times never change.

Best time to trade forex

The liquidity-by-hour illustration in this guide is the honest answer: relative volume is low through Sydney, rises through Tokyo, steps up sharply at the London open, peaks in the London–New York overlap between 13:00 and 17:00 UTC, and fades after London closes at 17:00 UTC. The shaded window is the best time to trade forex for almost everyone: tightest spreads, deepest order books, the most institutional participation and — for structure traders — the most reliable sweeps of the ranges built in the quieter hours.

◆ Diagram · liquidity by hour · the best time to trade forex

Within that, by pair: EUR/USD and GBP/USD from the London open through the overlap; USD/JPY in Tokyo and again in the overlap; AUD/USD and NZD/USD in Tokyo; USD/CAD in New York, especially around the 8:30 am ET data. Gold, quoted at most forex brokers, follows the London–New York pattern almost exactly, which is why our gold engine runs in that window.

The worst times: the Friday afternoon fade, the Sunday open, the daily 5 pm ET settlement, the Tokyo lunch hour, and the minutes around a scheduled release.

Is the forex market open today?

If it is between Sunday 5 pm and Friday 5 pm New York time, yes. Public holidays do not close the interbank market, but they do empty it: on US holidays such as Thanksgiving and Independence Day, and UK bank holidays, the affected session trades at a fraction of normal volume with wider spreads, and some brokers restrict trading on specific instruments. The two days most brokers treat as closed are Christmas Day and New Year's Day. The live clock on this page shows the current state and the next open; for holiday schedules, your broker's calendar is the source, because policies differ.

Forex hours versus other markets

The comparison matters because a trader used to stocks assumes "open" means liquid, and a trader used to crypto assumes the clock does not matter. Forex is the market where the clock is most of the edge.

How we trade the sessions

Every forex and gold call on our public track record was posted in the London session or the London–New York overlap, and none in Sydney hours. Zeno's Gravity Zone engine reads structure on any timeframe, but the setups it prints in the overlap are the ones with the fills to match. If your available hours are outside that window, the honest advice is on our forex pairs page: trade the pair whose home session overlaps your day, or consider a market without sessions.