Set datetime Object to Local Time Zone in Python (Example)

This post explains how to transform a datetime object to the local time zone in Python.

Creating Example Data & Loading datetime Module

First, we have to load the datetime module, as you can see below:

from datetime import datetime

Additionally, the pytz module has to be imported.

import pytz

Now, we generate a datetime object using the following code:

date_x = datetime(2023, 3, 20, 18, 12, 55, tzinfo = pytz.utc)
print(date_x)
# 2023-03-20 18:12:55+00:00

To display the time zone that is used for this datetime object we can use the strftime() function.

date_x_utc = date_x.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z%z')
print(date_x_utc)
# 2023-03-20 18:12:55 UTC+0000

The output shows the time zone of our datetime object: UTC time zone (Coordinated Universal Time)

Example: Using astimezone() Function to Convert datetime Object

To convert our datetime object into local time, we can use the astimezone() function:

import datetime
local_time = datetime.datetime.now().astimezone().tzinfo
print(local_time)

You can see my local time zone is CET (i.e. Central European Time).

To transform the example datetime object to CET, we can use the following code:

date_x_cet = date_x.astimezone(pytz.timezone('Europe/Berlin')).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z%z')
print(date_x_cet)
# 2023-03-20 19:12:55 CET+0100

The Central European Time (CET) zone is one hour earlier than Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) zone.

Further Resources

Please find some related tutorials below.

• Set datetime to Different Time Zone in Python (3 Examples)
• How to Make an Unaware datetime Time Zone Aware (Python Example)
• Set datetime Object to Date Only String in Python (3 Examples)
• Set Epoch Time to datetime Object & Vice Versa in Python (2 Examples)
• All Python Programming Tutorials

Note: This article was created in collaboration with Matthias Bäuerlen. Matthias is a programmer who helps to create tutorials on the Python programming language. You might find more info about Matthias and his other articles on his profile page.