CST to IST

CST is behind IST by 10.5 hours today

On 28 August 2026, Central Standard Time (US) is on CDT at UTC-05:00 and India Standard Time is on IST at UTC+05:30. The gap between them is 10.5 hours, with IST ahead. So 9:00 am in CST is 7:00 pm in IST, and 5:00 pm in CST is 3:00 am in IST. Going the other way, see IST to CST.

The gap is not constant, and that is the part that catches people out

Central Standard Time (US) is currently observing daylight saving and changes next on 1 November 2026, when clocks go back an hour. India Standard Time does not observe daylight saving at all, so the whole of the seasonal change comes from the CST side: the gap moves by an hour twice a year even though nothing changes in India Standard Time.

When you can actually both be at work

Taking a working day as 9:00 am to 5:00 pm local at each end, there are 0 overlapping hours in a normal day. There is none: the two working days do not touch at all, so any live meeting between Central Standard Time (US) and India Standard Time has to sit outside somebody's normal hours. The table above shows which end has the shorter stretch to give up.

Zone rules are set by legislation and change, sometimes at short notice. This page is built against tzdata 2026a, last reviewed 2026-08-18. Quarterly. Zone rules change by legislation, sometimes at short notice. Version and review date are shown on every zone page. The converter above reads your browser's own copy of the zone database, so if a rule has changed since this page was built the live answer follows the new rule — and so does everything above, which is worked out from the same database when you open the page.

Every convention used above — whether the start date counts, how month ends are clamped, which holidays close an office — is written out on the methodology page, including the daylight-saving rules behind the 10.5-hour gap above.