The DateTimeZone Class

The DateTimeZone class allows you to work with time zones in PHP. It accepts a string with a time zone identifier in its constructor.

Syntax

new DateTimeZone(string $timezone);

Let's create a time zone object for Moscow:

<?php
	$timezone = new DateTimeZone('Europe/Moscow');
	print_r($timezone);
?>

Code execution result:

DateTimeZone Object
(
	'timezone_type' => 3
	'timezone' => Europe/Moscow
)

Usage with the DateTime class:

<?php
	$timezone = new DateTimeZone('America/New_York');
	$date = new DateTime('now', $timezone);
	echo $date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');
?>

Code execution result (current time in New York):

'2025-06-15 14:30:00'

Getting a list of all available time zones:

<?php
	$timezones = DateTimeZone::listIdentifiers();
	print_r(array_slice($timezones, 0, 5));
?>

Code execution result:

[
	'Africa/Abidjan'
	'Africa/Accra'
	'Africa/Addis_Ababa'
	'Africa/Algiers'
	'Africa/Asmara'
]

Getting the time zone offset from UTC:

<?php
	$timezone = new DateTimeZone('Asia/Tokyo');
	echo $timezone->getOffset($date) / 3600;
?>

Code execution result:

9