Time in the Danish Realm

The Danish Realm, including its dependencies of the Faroe Islands and Greenland, and metropolitan Denmark, uses six time zones.

Time zones

[Central European Time]

UTC+01:00 as standard time, and UTC+02:00 as daylight saving time, with transition dates according to the European Union rules.

All of Denmark proper.
*Including Copenhagen, Aarhus and Rønne

[Western European Time]

UTC+00:00 as standard time, and UTC+01:00 as daylight saving time.

The Faroe Islands

[Greenwich Mean Time]

UTC+00:00 year around, no daylight saving time

The northeast coast of Greenland. There are a few settlements, like the weather station Danmarkshavn, otherwise unpopulated.

West Greenland Time

UTC−02:00 as standard time, and UTC−01:00 as daylight saving time.

All the west coast of Greenland
*Including Qaanaaq, Ilulissat, Kangerlussuaq, Nuuk and Qaqortoq
Tasiilaq, Kulusuk, Ittoqqortoormiit, Neerlerit Inaat and surrounding area on the east coast Prior to October 29, 2023, the area was on the East Greenland Time.
Except Pituffik Space Base

Atlantic Time">Atlantic Time Zone">Atlantic Time

UTC−04:00 as standard time, and UTC−03:00 as daylight saving time, with transition dates according to the United States rules.

Pituffik Space Base

All of Greenland uses Daylight Saving Time, except for the northeast coast. The transition dates are according to the European Union rules, except for the Pituffik Space Base, which uses United States transition dates and for which the following description does not apply.
DST starts at 01:00 UTC on the last Sunday in March and ends same time on the last Sunday in October each year in all affected areas.
That means that in Denmark proper, the transition is at 02:00 Local Standard Time and in the Faroe Islands one hour earlier. In most of Greenland, the transition takes place at 23:00 Local Standard Time on the day before.

History

The first time a common time was used in Denmark, was in 1890, when Copenhagen local time was used as railway time. This was GMT+0:50:20 from Greenwich. In 1890 this time was introduced as a standard time for Denmark. In 1893, Denmark adopted the "Act on the Determination of Time", to connect to the international time zones, using Greenwich plus one hour, which set the standard time in Denmark as noon when the sun is directly above 15°E, starting from 1 January 1894. This is the local time of eastern Bornholm, leaving 99.5% of the country west of the time meridian, which has triggered some sarcastic comments. However all of the country is located east of Greenwich +00:30.
Daylight saving time was used in the years 1916, 1940, 1945-1948 and is currently in use since 1980.
The Faroe Islands introduced Greenwich Mean Time in 1908, and Iceland introduced GMT-01:00 at the same time. West Greenland introduced GMT-03:00 in 1916. Daylight saving time was introduced in the Faroe Islands in 1981.
On 25 January 2023, Transport Minister, Thomas Danielsen made a proposal to overrule the 1893 law, with an act to set Danish standard time as UTC+1, with exceptions for Greenland and the Faroe Islands.
On 14 March 2023, the Folketing adopted the proposal with unanimous consent, and the proposal came in effect as law on 26 March 2023, at 2:00. Greenland moved the time zone forward one hour simultaneously, after that using UTC−02:00 as the standard time.

IANA time zone database

Data for Denmark directly from zone.tab of the IANA time zone database. Columns marked with * are the columns from zone.tab itself.

c.c.*	Coordinates*	TZ*	Comments*	UTC offset	UTC DST offset	Map
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	Redirects to Europe/Berlin.	-	-	-	-	-
		-	-	-	-	-
		-	-	-	-	-
		-	-	-	-	-
		-	-	-	-	-
	Redirects to America/Nuuk.	-	-	-	-	-
		-	-	-	-	-