Set datetime to Different Time Zone in Python (3 Examples)

This post shows how to transform the time zone of a datetime object to another time zone (UTC, CET, CST, EAT, EST) in Python.

Loading datetime Module & Generating Example Data

We can load the datetime module as shown below.

from datetime import datetime

We also have to import the pytz module to deal with the different time zones:

import pytz

For the different examples, the following datetime object with time zone UTC will be created:

date_x = datetime(2025, 5, 25, 13, 50, 30, tzinfo = pytz.utc)
print(date_x)
# 2025-05-25 13:50:30+00:00

By using the strftime() function, we can format our datetime object to show the time zone.

date_x_utc = date_x.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z%z')
print(date_x_utc)
# 2025-05-25 13:50:30 UTC+0000

Example 1: Set datetime to EST Time Zone

To transform datetime object to the time zone EST, we can apply the astimezone() function and the time zone ‘US/Eastern’ as shown next:

date_x_est = date_x.astimezone(pytz.timezone('US/Eastern')).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z%z')
print(date_x_est)
# 2025-05-25 09:50:30 EDT-0400

Example 2: Convert datetime to CST Time Zone

Similar to the code in the first example, we can transform our datetime object to the CST time zone by specifying ‘US/Central’ within the timezone() function:

date_x_cst = date_x.astimezone(pytz.timezone('US/Central')).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z%z')
print(date_x_cst)
# 2025-05-25 08:50:30 CDT-0500

Example 3: Set datetime to CET Time Zone

And if we want to convert our time zone to CET, we have to specify ‘Europe/Berlin’:

date_x_cet = date_x.astimezone(pytz.timezone('Europe/Berlin')).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z%z')
print(date_x_cet)
# 2025-05-25 15:50:30 CEST+0200

Further Resources

Please find some related tutorials below.

• Set datetime to Unix Timestamp in Python (2 Examples)
• Set String to datetime Object in Python (3 Examples)
• Set Unix Timestamp to datetime in Python (Example)
• 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.