Forex Market Sessions: Hours, Overlaps and Liquidity

The foreign exchange market has no central exchange and no single opening bell. It is a network of banks, dealers, brokers and electronic platforms that trade around the clock on weekdays as business hours move from Asia to Europe to North America. Traders divide the day into sessions named after the main centers because liquidity, spreads and typical price behavior change as those centers open and close.

A market without an exchange

Spot FX trades over the counter, so session boundaries are conventions rather than rules. What is measurable is where trading happens. The Bank for International Settlements' 2025 Triennial Survey put global FX turnover at $9.6 trillion per day in April 2025, with the US dollar on one side of 89.2% of trades. The BIS reported that sales desks in the United Kingdom accounted for 38% of total turnover, and that desks in four locations, the United Kingdom, the United States, Singapore and Hong Kong SAR, accounted for 75%.

That concentration explains why the London session matters so much for liquidity, and why the hours when London and New York are both open tend to be the busiest of the day.

The four sessions

The session hours below are the local business-hour convention used by our forex market hours clock. Other sources draw the lines an hour or two differently.

Because each city keeps its own clock, the sessions shift against each other and against UTC through the year.

Session times in UTC

January (Sydney on daylight time; London and New York on standard time):

July (Sydney on standard time; London and New York on daylight time):

The overlaps follow from these tables:

The weekly open and close

By market convention, the trading week runs from Sunday 17:00 New York time to Friday 17:00 New York time. In UTC that is 22:00 when New York is on standard time and 21:00 during US daylight saving. The open falls on Monday morning in Sydney: 09:00 local in January and 07:00 local in July.

The same 17:00 New York time marks the daily rollover, when positions held overnight are rolled to the next value date and many brokers apply swap. Liquidity is thin around that moment, and spreads often widen sharply for a few minutes.

Prices can gap between Friday's close and Sunday's open when news breaks over the weekend. A stop order does not protect against a gap: it fills at the first available price, which can be well past the stop level.

Daylight saving shifts

The sessions move against each other because the main centers change their clocks on different dates, and one does not change at all:

For a few weeks each year the usual five-hour gap between London and New York shrinks to four. In 2026, the US clocks moved forward on 8 March and the UK and EU on 29 March, so for three weeks New York's 08:00 open came one hour earlier in London time than usual. The autumn mismatch is shorter: Europe returns to standard time on 25 October 2026 and the US on 1 November 2026. Sydney moves to daylight time on 4 October 2026, which shifts the Sydney session an hour earlier in UTC.

Strategies coded to fixed server or UTC times trade a different part of the session during these weeks. Backtests that ignore the shifts can blur the very session effects a strategy depends on.

Liquidity and spreads by session

Liquidity is not evenly spread through the day, and spreads follow liquidity:

• Sydney and Tokyo. Activity centers on the yen and the Australian and New Zealand dollars. European pairs such as EUR/GBP and EUR/CHF are usually quieter, and their spreads can be wider than in London hours.
• London open. Volume rises sharply as European banks start trading, and spreads on European pairs tighten.
• London and New York overlap. Usually the deepest liquidity of the day for the major dollar pairs, and the window where many major US data releases land.
• London 4 p.m. fix. The WM/Reuters benchmark rates are calculated from trades and quotes in a five-minute window centered on 16:00 UK time, according to the LSEG methodology. Orders benchmarked to the fix are executed around this window, which can produce brief bursts of volume and volatility.
• Late New York. Liquidity fades through the afternoon into the 17:00 rollover.

Scheduled news overrides session patterns. Spreads can widen in any session around central bank decisions and major data releases. For short-term strategies, session-dependent spreads change results enough that a backtest using one fixed spread can overstate performance. Session spreads also change the pip cost of each trade, which the guide to pips helps translate into money.

Commodity-linked currencies add another layer, since they can react to oil and metal markets that keep their own hours. The guide to oil prices and commodity currencies covers that link.

Key points

• Spot FX is over the counter; sessions are conventions based on business hours in Sydney, Tokyo, London and New York.
• The week runs from Sunday 17:00 to Friday 17:00 New York time, which is 21:00 or 22:00 UTC.
• The London and New York overlap is typically the most liquid window for major dollar pairs.
• Different daylight saving dates in New York, London and Sydney shift the overlaps for several weeks each year; Tokyo does not change.
• Spreads widen around the 17:00 New York rollover and major news, which matters for short-term strategies.