Best Meeting Time: London to Los Angeles

London and Los Angeles sit 8 hours apart during summer, leaving a single hour of standard working-day overlap: 5pm to 6pm in London, 9am to 10am in Los Angeles. That narrow window shapes every recurring meeting between the two cities, and getting the math wrong by even one hour during clock-change weekends means someone dials in at the wrong time.

Working Across London and Los Angeles

The most active cross-city relationship between London and Los Angeles runs through media and entertainment. UK broadcasters, streaming platforms, production companies, and talent agencies routinely work with their Los Angeles counterparts on co-productions, licensing deals, and distribution rights. A London-based rights holder and an LA studio are a common pairing, and their finance and legal teams need to coordinate on the same calls as the creative side. The music industry mirrors this: labels headquartered in London have A&R, publishing, and royalty teams that report into or partner with offices in Los Angeles. Technology adds another layer. Several US tech firms with large London engineering or sales operations run product meetings that include both cities. The London team is often the European lead, while Los Angeles is either a secondary US hub or the global HQ for companies based on the West Coast. Finance is a smaller but real thread. The City of London, as Europe's largest financial centre, keeps an eye on New York hours more than Los Angeles ones, but any deal with a West Coast private equity firm, venture fund, or listed tech company pulls London bankers and lawyers into calls timed around LA mornings. On the Los Angeles side, media and tech offices often start at 10am Pacific, which matters when the London end is already at 6pm and eyeing the door.

Time Difference: London and Los Angeles

Los Angeles is currently 8 hours behind London. The live offsets are London UTC+1 and Los Angeles UTC-7. London observes daylight saving and Los Angeles also observes daylight saving, so the offset shifts twice a year if both sides aren't already aligned.

At standard time, London is at UTC+0 and Los Angeles is at UTC-8, making the gap 8 hours. Currently, with both cities on summer or daylight-saving time, London sits at UTC+1 and Los Angeles at UTC-7, so the gap remains 8 hours. Both cities observe DST, which is why the offset stays constant across most of the year. The complication arrives in autumn. The United Kingdom changes its clocks on the last Sunday in October, while the United States reverts on the first Sunday in November. For roughly one week each autumn, London has dropped back to UTC+0 while Los Angeles is still on UTC-7, making the gap 7 hours rather than the usual 8. During that specific week, an LA counterpart expecting a call at their usual time will find it arrives an hour earlier on the London clock than expected. In spring, the US moves its clocks forward on the second Sunday in March; the UK does so on the last Sunday in March. That produces another brief window, typically one week, where the gap is 9 hours rather than 8, because Los Angeles has already sprung forward while London has not.

Best Times to Meet

The working-day overlap between London and Los Angeles is exactly 1 hour: 5pm to 6pm in London and 9am to 10am in Los Angeles. Inside that 1-hour window, the cleanest slot is typically 5pm to 5:30pm London time, which lands at 9am to 9:30am in Los Angeles before most LA participants have been pulled into their own internal meetings. London callers should note that informal meetings between 5pm and 6pm are already common in London's finance community, so that slot is culturally accepted even if it sits at the edge of the day. The Los Angeles end, however, may not be fully settled at 9am sharp: media and tech offices in LA often don't get going until 10am Pacific, which falls outside the overlap window entirely. For any call where the full LA team needs to be present and alert, starting precisely at 9am Los Angeles time is worth confirming explicitly. Avoid scheduling on a London Friday after 4pm, as the UK working week winds down earlier than the nominal 6pm end, and Friday afternoons in Los Angeles are similarly quiet.

These conversions use the current 8-hour gap (both cities on daylight-saving time). 9am Monday in London = 1am Monday in Los Angeles. This is outside any working window and suits asynchronous handoffs only, not live calls. 12pm (noon) Tuesday in London = 4am Tuesday in Los Angeles. Again, entirely outside LA working hours; a London midday deadline means Los Angeles receives the work before their day begins. 5pm Wednesday in London = 9am Wednesday in Los Angeles. This is the overlap window: the one slot where both cities are nominally at their desks simultaneously, and the most practical time for a live meeting between London and Los Angeles.

Working Hours Overlap Explained

London operates on Europe/London (currently UTC+1). Los Angeles operates on America/Los_Angeles (currently UTC-7). The table below maps a standard 9:00 AM–6:00 PM day in London to Los Angeles's local time.

Tips for Scheduling Across London and Los Angeles

• The 1-hour overlap falls at 5pm London and 9am Los Angeles; confirm LA participants actually start at 9am before booking it.
• Avoid the UK May Bank Holiday when scheduling standing calls: it has no US equivalent and Los Angeles teams rarely spot it on their calendars.
• LA media and tech offices often start at 10am Pacific, which lands at 6pm or 7pm London time and outside any working overlap.
• For one week each autumn, after the UK clocks go back but before the US follows, the gap temporarily narrows to 7 hours, shifting your standing call by an hour.
• London Fridays wind down by 4pm; Los Angeles Fridays follow a similar pattern in entertainment, making Friday the weakest day for cross-city calls.

Public Holidays and Working Weeks

London office culture defaults to a 9am to 5:30pm working day, with Fridays often winding down by 4pm. Lunch runs from roughly 12:30pm to 1:30pm, and scheduling calls across that window tends to get low attendance from the London side. Los Angeles offices, particularly in media and tech, skew later: a 10am Pacific start and a 7pm finish is a common pattern, designed partly to catch afternoon hours in Asia. That later LA start is the single biggest practical constraint for the London-to-Los Angeles pairing, because it pushes the genuinely engaged LA participants outside the formal overlap window. On public holidays, the two cities share Christmas Day on 25 December but diverge elsewhere. London observes New Year's Day on 1 January and the May Bank Holiday on the first Monday in May. Los Angeles observes Independence Day on 4 July and Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday in November. Thanksgiving is a particular trap: it falls during a period when UK calendars show a normal working week, so London teams may schedule calls that find their Los Angeles contacts entirely absent for the long weekend. The reverse applies to the May Bank Holiday, which has no US equivalent and will catch LA teams off guard if they're booking standing calls without checking the UK calendar.

Recommended Scheduling Tools

Some links are affiliate links. We only recommend tools we'd use ourselves. They don't cost you anything extra.

Related City Pairs

Frequently Asked Questions