Why does France have so many time zones?

If you’ve ever heard the popular quiz question, ‘Which country has the most time zones?’, you’ll probably have been surprised to hear that the answer is France.

Indeed, France has not one, not two, but twelve different time zones! That number rises to thirteen if you include France’s claim in Antarctica. With twelve (or thirteen) time zones, France is ahead of Russia and the United States (which both have eleven) and Australia and the UK (which both have nine).

France is only around 1,000km in width, while countries such as Australia and Russia are 4,000km wide and 9,000km wide respectively, so it might seem perplexing that France has so many time zones.

When most people think of France, they think of Metropolitan France. This is the term used to refer to the part of France that is in Europe, bordering on Germany and Italy to the east, Spain to the south, and the long Atlantic Ocean to the west. But France also comprises a number of overseas departments in the Pacific, Indian, Atlantic and Antarctic oceans.

While Metropolitan France is in daylight, some of these places are shrouded in darkness - and vice versa. The collectivity Wallis and Futuna, for example, which is 16,000km away from Metropolitan France, is ten hours ahead of the mainland in summer time, and eleven hours ahead in standard time.

While Metropolitan France observes summer time, meaning that the clocks go back an hour in March and go forwards an hour in October, the territories of Overseas France do not. The exception is Saint Pierre and Miquelon, which follows the daylight saving time schedule of the US and Canada. Regardless of whether Metropolitan France is in summer or standard time, it does not share a time zone with any of its territories.

The switch was introduced to (Metropolitan) France in 1976 to save energy costs.