Beijing Winter Olympics 2022: What time zone is Beijing?

The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics begin this week, with official events starting as early as Wednesday. But if you’re in North America, keeping track of when the events are taking place can be a bit of a challenge.

As we learned with the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, you’ll sometimes need a calendar reminder for when to watch the biggest contests of the games. Many will take place in the middle of the night or early, early in the morning.

If there’s daylight at the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, there won’t be if you’re watching them live anywhere in the USA. And whatever day it is where you are, it’s actually tomorrow in China most of the time.

In which time zone is Beijing located?

Beijing observes China Standard Time, sometimes abbreviated as CST.

How big is the time difference from the US to Beijing?

• USA Eastern Time (ET) to Beijing: 13 hours ahead
• USA Central Time (CT) to Beijing: 14 hours ahead
• USA Mountain Time (MT) to Beijing: 15 hours ahead
• USA Pacific Time (PT) to Beijing: 16 hours ahead

This means a 9:00 a.m. hockey game in Beijing will take place at 10:00 p.m. on the East Coast of the USA, but in prime time at 7:00 p.m. in California, Oregon, Washington, and Nevada. But the late night short track speed skating finals that frequently happen at 10:00 p.m. or even later in China will be taking place almost at lunch time in the USA.

Something to keep in mind is the Olympics official website does allow you to default to your own time zone. So set it and forget it, and if you don’t change the cookies on your browser it should return to your local time every visit until the Games are completed.