Fun fact : with its 12 standard times, France currently holds the world record for the country with the most time zones, beating even the United States and Russia, which have 11 time zones each.
The main part of the country, France métropolitaine, spans only 1 time zone. The remaining 11 time zones are added by France's dependencies (France d’Outre-Mer) such as Guadeloupe, New Caledonia or Wallis and Futuna amongst others.
Between March and October, France métropolitaine is in the Central European Summer Time (or CEST) time zone, UTC+2. It means that :
- France is 6 hours ahead of North America - East Coast
- France is 9 hours ahead of North America - West Coast
- France is 8 hours behind Australia - East Coast
- France is 6 hours behind Australia - West Coast
France uses the 24-hour system, which means that 5 pm will be expressed as 17:00, for example.
Photo credits
Photo by Artem Beliaikin on Unsplash