UTC−12:00


UTC−12:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of −12:00, sometimes referred to as the International Date Line West. It is the earliest and latest time zone.

As standard time (all year round)

Oceania

UTC−12:00 is a nautical time zone comprising the high seas between 180° and 172°30′W longitude, and the time is obtained by subtracting twelve hours from UTC.

Characteristics of UTC−12:00

A number of inhabited islands lie within the longitudinal limits of this time zone, but none of them keeps the date and time of UTC−12:00. Instead, they keep the time and date of one of the neighboring zones, usually because they belong, politically, to an island group whose other members lie mostly in the neighboring time zone.
Since the International Date Line West time zone represents the last place on Earth where a particular time and/or date exists, it is referred to as Anywhere on Earth. This means that, for instance, if a deadline has not passed in the UTC–12:00 zone, the deadline has not yet passed "Anywhere on Earth".
The IDLW is also used in software testing for time zone related code that uses system default time zone, as in some cases they may be the same as on the developer's computer. Since the area of the IDLW has no programmers or data centers, there is no conflict.