Nepal keeps its clocks 45 minutes off the hour, and at least 9 hours 45 minutes ahead of New York. That gap does something useful for a New York team: a 10-to-6 working day in Kathmandu starts after you log off and is finished before your 9 a.m. start.
Nepal's 45-minute clock
Most time zones sit a whole number of hours from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), one hour for every 15 degrees the Earth turns. Nepal's does not. Nepal Standard Time follows the meridian at Mount Gauri Shankar, about 100 km east of Kathmandu (Nepali Times). The Earth turns one degree every four minutes, so mean solar time at 86°15′ east runs exactly 5 hours 45 minutes ahead of Greenwich.
The IANA time zone database, which records the history of local time around the world, lists Kathmandu at UTC+5:30 until 1986 and at UTC+5:45 since. Only two other places in it keep a 45-minute offset: New Zealand's Chatham Islands, at UTC+12:45 in standard time, and a remote stretch of Western Australia around Eucla, where the zone is unofficial.1
In software, the zone is Asia/Kathmandu, and Windows lists it as "(UTC+05:45) Kathmandu" (Microsoft Learn). Once both clocks are in your calendar, the 45 minutes stops being arithmetic. It simply shows up as meetings that start at a quarter past or a quarter to the hour.
The gap moves twice a year
Nepal does not use daylight saving time. New York does, from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November (NIST), so the distance between the two cities changes by an hour twice a year.
| Period | New York time | Kathmandu is ahead by |
|---|---|---|
| March 8 to November 1, 2026 | Eastern Daylight Time (UTC-4) | 9 hours 45 minutes |
| November 1, 2026, to March 14, 2027 | Eastern Standard Time (UTC-5) | 10 hours 45 minutes |
| March 14 to November 7, 2027 | Eastern Daylight Time (UTC-4) | 9 hours 45 minutes |
A Kathmandu workday on your clock
Take a 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. day in Kathmandu as the example. In New York it runs from 12:15 a.m. to 8:15 a.m. between March and November, and from 11:15 p.m. to 7:15 a.m. the rest of the year. Teams choose their own hours, and the conversion works the same way for any schedule; the Nepal time overlap calculator does it for yours. From here on, summer means March to November and winter the rest of the year.
| Kathmandu 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. in | March to November | November to March |
|---|---|---|
| New York (Eastern) | 12:15 a.m. to 8:15 a.m. | 11:15 p.m. to 7:15 a.m. |
| Chicago (Central) | 11:15 p.m. to 7:15 a.m. | 10:15 p.m. to 6:15 a.m. |
| Denver (Mountain) | 10:15 p.m. to 6:15 a.m. | 9:15 p.m. to 5:15 a.m. |
| San Francisco (Pacific) | 9:15 p.m. to 5:15 a.m. | 8:15 p.m. to 4:15 a.m. |
In all four main US time zones, the Kathmandu day falls between the end of your working day and the start of the next. Nobody on either side works a night shift for that to happen.
The same holds in Canada. Toronto and Montreal keep Eastern time, like New York, and Vancouver, which stopped changing its clocks in 2026, stays 12 hours 45 minutes behind Kathmandu all year. Offshore software development for Canada covers the rest, including the privacy rules that apply before data leaves the country.
One night, hour by hour
This is a single summer weeknight, starting when a New York team logs off. Times follow the example schedule, with New York on daylight saving time.
| New York (EDT) | Kathmandu | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 5:00 p.m. | 2:45 a.m. | You write a handoff note and log off |
| 12:15 a.m. | 10:00 a.m. | The Kathmandu team starts its day with your note |
| 4:15 a.m. | 2:00 p.m. | Kathmandu's afternoon of building, reviewing and testing |
| 8:15 a.m. | 6:00 p.m. | Kathmandu writes its handback note and logs off |
| 9:00 a.m. | 6:45 p.m. | Your day starts, with that note waiting |
There are 16 hours between 5 p.m. and 9 a.m. in New York. An eight-hour Kathmandu day fits inside them, ending 45 minutes before 9 a.m. in summer and an hour and 45 minutes before it in winter. Both teams keep daytime hours, and the work still moves overnight.
The week lines up the same way. Work handed over at 3 p.m. on a Friday in New York is picked up at 10 a.m. on Monday in Kathmandu, which is 12:15 a.m. Monday in New York in summer. That Kathmandu Monday is over by 8:15 a.m. yours.
How work crosses the night
A team split across these hours works best when it is asynchronous by design: decisions are written down, and every handoff carries enough context to act on without a follow-up question. That is the model our page for US teams working with Kathmandu describes, and a paper on round-the-clock development points to the handoff as well.
"Follow the sun" (FTS) is the name for work that passes between teams in different time zones so a project moves 24 hours a day. According to the journal's abstract of a 2010 paper on it by Erran Carmel, J. Alberto Espinosa and Yael Dubinsky, the primary factors in making FTS successful "are said to be efficiency in terms of scheduling and handing off work, and coordination within and between the work sites" (Journal of Management Information Systems).
A handoff note does not need to be long. It needs four things:
- What changed, with links to the pull requests or tickets
- What is blocked, and which decision would unblock it
- What the other team should pick up first
- Anything worth a live conversation at the next shared window
Writing things down pays off beyond the handoff itself. DORA, the software delivery research program run by Google Cloud, found in its 2022 research that documentation quality amplifies the lift in organizational performance that teams get from their technical practices, and that this held for every technical capability it studied that year (DORA). It compared teams with above-average and below-average documentation:
Some conversations still need voices. The natural place for them is a short standing window at the edge of both days: the start of yours and the end of theirs. On the example schedule, the last quarter-hour of the Kathmandu day starts at 5:45 p.m., which is 8 a.m. in New York in summer and 7 a.m. in winter, an hour or two before a 9 a.m. start. Set the invite in Kathmandu time, and your calendar adjusts it on your side when the US changes its clocks.
Nepal's calendar next to yours
Nepal's government moved its offices and schools to a Saturday and Sunday weekend from April 6, 2026 (The Himalayan Times). In August, the law minister told the National Assembly that the government had "no decision or preparation" to review it (Nepal News). Our own working week runs Monday to Friday.
Nepal's Ministry of Home Affairs publishes the year's public holidays in advance, and the dates move from year to year because most festivals follow the lunar calendar.2 These are the ones between September and December, with the most days off each usually means at a Kathmandu IT company:
| Public holiday in Nepal | Days off, at most |
|---|---|
| Constitution Day | 1 |
| Indra Jatra (Kathmandu Valley only) | 1 |
| Ghatasthapana | 1 |
| Dashain | 5 to 6 |
| Tihar | 5 |
| Chhath | 1 |
| Dhanya Purnima (Yomari Punhi) | 1 |
| Christmas Day | 1 |
| Tamu Lhochhar | 1 |
Dashain and Tihar are Nepal's longest holiday stretch. Government offices can close for up to 7 days at Dashain, but IT companies set their own calendars, and there it usually means 5 to 6 days off. During both festivals, we keep smaller backup teams available for emergency patches and updates. The ministry publishes each year's list before the Nepali new year in mid-April, so ask your team for the dates as soon as it is out.
The US calendar runs on different days. Thanksgiving is not a public holiday in Nepal, so work you leave on the Wednesday before it can keep moving on the Thursday and the Friday after it. Christmas Day is on both countries' official lists (OPM).
Nepal's tech sector in numbers
A Kathmandu team belongs to an IT industry that has grown quickly and sits mostly in one city. Industry leaders estimate that around 100,000 people now work in it, and the president of the Nepal Association for Software and IT Services (NAS-IT) says 90 percent of IT employment is concentrated in Kathmandu (Kathmandu Post, February 2026).
The same February report puts NAS-IT's estimate of the country's IT exports at about $1 billion. That estimate builds on a 2022 study by the Institute for Integrated Development Studies (IIDS), which put exports at about $515 million and estimated more than 70,000 IT professionals. In July 2026, NAS-IT's president said the sector "has been growing by 15 to 20 percent annually" (Kathmandu Post).
GitHub's own data points the same way. Its Innovation Graph counted 486,967 developer accounts located in Nepal at the end of March 2026, up from 345,782 a year earlier and 69,284 in March 2020 (GitHub Innovation Graph). The figure counts accounts rather than people and may include accounts that are no longer active, but the direction is plain: seven times as many in six years, and 41 percent more in the last one.
On English, Nepal ranked 58th of 123 countries and regions in the 2025 EF English Proficiency Index, in EF's "moderate" band, with a score of 514 (EF EPI 2025). Of the four skills EF tests, Nepal scored highest on writing, at 547, and Kathmandu scored 531 overall. The index draws on test results from 2.2 million adults who took EF's online English test, and writing is the skill an overnight handoff runs on.
Some of the growth is coming home. "Many Nepalis have returned to start their own tech-enabled companies," an IIDS research assistant told the Kathmandu Post in its February report, and he and NAS-IT's president both describe the diaspora as a central force behind the sector's recent expansion. The government backs the export side as well: the budget for fiscal year 2026/27 includes a 50 percent tax exemption on IT service exports (The Rising Nepal).
US demand is projected to keep growing too. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects about 106,100 openings a year for software developers, quality assurance analysts and testers from 2025 to 2035, with employment growing 10 percent, much faster than the average for all occupations (BLS). For how Nepal compares with India, its larger neighbor, see Nepal vs India for software teams.
Setting up your first week
Add Kathmandu as a second clock
Add
Asia/Kathmanduas a second time zone in your calendar, so it shows both times and nobody has to do the arithmetic.Write the handoff before you log off
Note what changed, what is blocked and what to pick up first. On the example schedule, it is read at 10 a.m. in Kathmandu, which is 12:15 a.m. in New York in summer.
Set one short window at the edge of the day
Book a standing 15-minute call for the questions that need a conversation, at 5:45 p.m. in Kathmandu on the example schedule: 8 a.m. in New York in summer and 7 a.m. in winter. Keep everything else in writing.
Start your morning with the handback
Read Kathmandu's note when your day starts, before your other meetings. Answer its questions during your day, and the answers are waiting when the Kathmandu team starts again that night, your time.
Mark the clock changes and the festivals
Add the second Sunday in March and the first Sunday in November, when the gap changes by an hour. Then add Dashain and Tihar as soon as your team shares the year's dates.
Before you choose a team, how to vet an offshore development partner sets out questions that show how its handoffs work in practice. The quickest of them is to ask to see a recent handoff note, redacted if it has to be.
Questions about Nepal time
What time is it in Kathmandu when it is 9 a.m. in New York?
It is 6:45 p.m. in Kathmandu from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November, and 7:45 p.m. for the rest of the year. Nepal does not change its clocks, so the difference moves when New York's clocks do.
Why is Nepal's time zone 45 minutes off the hour?
Nepal Standard Time follows the meridian at Mount Gauri Shankar, about 100 km east of Kathmandu, rather than a whole-hour meridian. At four minutes per degree of longitude, 86°15′ east is 5 hours 45 minutes ahead of UTC.
Does Nepal observe daylight saving time?
No. Kathmandu stays on UTC+5:45 all year, so it is 9 hours 45 minutes ahead of New York during US daylight saving time and 10 hours 45 minutes ahead for the rest of the year.
Do Kathmandu and New York working hours overlap?
Not unless one side shifts its hours. A 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. day in Kathmandu, for example, ends by 8:15 a.m. in New York, before a 9 a.m. start. Teams use the gap to hand work over at the end of each day, and keep a short standing call at the edge of both days for conversations that need voices.
Which Nepali holidays should a US team plan around?
Dashain and Tihar, Nepal's longest public holidays, usually fall between late September and November. At IT companies, Dashain usually means 5 to 6 days off and Tihar up to 5. Christmas Day is a public holiday in both countries, while Thanksgiving is not a public holiday in Nepal.
More questions about working with us are answered on the FAQ page.
The entries are
↩Asia/Kathmanduin the database's asia file, andPacific/ChathamandAustralia/Euclain its australasia file, whose notes describe the Eucla zone as not officially recognized.The lists are published in the Nepal Gazette, in Nepali. In the lists for Bikram Sambat 2081, 2082 and 2083, which run from April 2024 to April 2027, Dashain covered 5, 6 and 7 days and Tihar 5 days each year. The Dashain and Tihar counts in the table are what IT companies usually give. Holidays that apply only to particular communities, regions or groups of employees are left out, except Indra Jatra, which covers the Kathmandu Valley.
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