Gold trading hours: the Asia, London and New York sessions in GMT and ET, and when gold moves most

Spot gold (XAU/USD) trades almost around the clock, from Sunday evening to Friday evening, with a daily break of about an hour that starts around 5:00 p.m. New York time, or ET (21:00 GMT/UTC in summer, 22:00 in winter). Along the way it moves through three sessions, Asia, London and New York, and the busiest stretch is usually the London–New York overlap, from 8:00 a.m. to noon ET (12:00–16:00 UTC in summer, 13:00–17:00 in winter). Your broker sets the exact hours, and you can check them in MetaTrader 5, in the symbol’s specification.

Gold trading hours: when the market opens, closes and pauses

Gold has no central exchange with an opening bell. The XAU/USD symbol in MetaTrader 5 tracks spot gold, which trades over the counter between banks and dealers around the world, so it trades almost nonstop. You don’t buy the metal itself: you trade its price through your broker, usually as a CFD (contract for difference). This is the usual weekly cycle of the gold market:

• Weekly open. Sunday at around 6:00 p.m. ET (22:00 GMT/UTC in summer, 23:00 in winter), or a little later depending on the broker.
• Daily break. About an hour from around 5:00 p.m. ET (21:00 UTC in summer, 22:00 in winter), with no prices and no trading. It usually coincides with midnight on the broker’s server, the daily rollover when swaps are applied.
• Weekly close. Friday at around 5:00 p.m. ET, at the New York close. After that, there are no prices until Sunday evening.

Here, “summer” means late March to late October, when both the US and the UK are on daylight saving time, and “winter” means early November to the second Sunday of March, when neither is. The mismatch weeks in between, when the two clocks are out of step, are covered below.

Where to check the exact hours in MetaTrader 5

Open Market Watch (Ctrl+M, or View → Market Watch), right-click the gold symbol (XAUUSD, GOLD or a name with a suffix, depending on the broker) and choose Specification. At the bottom, under Sessions, it lists day by day the quote sessions (when prices come in) and the trade sessions (when orders are accepted). The two don’t always match.

Your chart runs on server time, not yours

Those hours, like your candle times and trade history, are in your broker’s server time, which can be ahead of or behind yours. The Market Watch header shows the time of the last quote received: compare it with your clock while the market is open (on weekends it stops) and note the difference. For example, if the server runs seven hours ahead of New York, the H1 candle your chart labels 15:00 is the 8:00–9:00 a.m. ET candle, the one that contains the US data released at 8:30 a.m. ET.

Gold trading sessions: Asia, London and New York in GMT and ET

The price never stops, but the market works in three shifts, depending on which financial center is awake. There’s no official timetable: these are the most widely used approximate windows, rounded to the hour, for normal weeks.

In the UK, the winter column holds all year round: because British clocks change too, the London session runs from 08:00 to 17:00 London time and the overlap from 13:00 to 17:00 in most weeks. Central Europe (Paris, Frankfurt, Madrid) is one hour ahead of London.

The Asian session starts with the reopen after the daily break, when spreads tend to be wider; it trades less gold than Europe and the US and, barring news, tends to move less. London is the hub of the wholesale physical gold market, and its open usually wakes the price up. New York adds the US economic data and the busiest hours of COMEX, one of the world’s most closely watched gold futures markets.

The LBMA Gold Price auctions

Twice a day, at 10:30 and 15:00 London time, electronic auctions run by ICE Benchmark Administration set the LBMA Gold Price, the benchmark used in many contracts for physical gold. In New York that is usually 5:30 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. ET; in UTC, 09:30 and 14:00 in summer and 10:30 and 15:00 in winter. They are reference points for the London market, not buy or sell signals.

The best time to trade gold, and the hours with thin liquidity

The busiest stretch: the London–New York overlap

With London and New York both open, more participants are active than at any other time. That usually means tighter spreads and bigger moves, and it’s also when the releases that move gold most come out: US jobs and inflation data at 8:30 a.m. ET (13:30 London time in normal weeks). We cover which ones they are and how to read them in our economic calendar for gold guide. After noon ET, with London closed, activity usually drops off, although Federal Reserve rate decisions come out at 2:00 p.m. ET (19:00 London time, or 18:00 in the mismatch weeks covered below).

Thin liquidity: the Asian reopen and public holidays

At the other end of the scale are the reopen after the daily break, late Friday and public holidays. In the US, the next holiday that usually shortens gold’s trading hours is Thanksgiving, on Thursday, November 26, 2026. In the UK, Boxing Day falls on a Saturday this year, so the bank holiday moves to Monday, December 28. And both countries observe Christmas Day (Friday, December 25) and New Year’s Day (Friday, January 1, 2027). Many brokers shorten gold’s hours on those days, or don’t open it at all on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, and announce it by email or on their website. With fewer counterparties around, spreads widen and orders fill at worse prices; we break down what that costs per trade in spread, slippage and commissions.

So what is the best time to trade gold?

There’s no answer that suits everyone. More volume usually means lower costs, but also faster moves in both directions. If you trade manually, think about the hours when you can be at the screen with a clear head. If you use a robot, what matters isn’t your favorite time of day but the hours the system was tested on: if its backtest covers quiet and busy hours alike, switching it off for some of them turns it into a different system that nobody has measured.

Clock changes: the weeks when London and New York are four hours apart

New York is usually five hours behind London, but the two countries change their clocks on different dates. The UK and the European Union move them forward on the last Sunday of March and back on the last Sunday of October; the US moves them forward on the second Sunday of March and back on the first Sunday of November. In between, one side of the Atlantic has changed and the other hasn’t, and the gap shrinks to four hours: in 2026, from March 8 to 28 and from October 25 to 31; in 2027, from March 14 to 27 and from October 31 to November 6. Our economic calendar for gold guide shows how this shifts calendar events, the Fed included.

In those weeks, anything that follows the New York clock arrives an hour earlier in London, while anything that follows London stays put:

Seen from New York, it’s the other way around: US releases stay at 8:30 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. ET, but anything tied to London falls an hour later. The London session opens at around 4:00 a.m. ET instead of 3:00 a.m., the LBMA auctions fall at 6:30 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. ET, and the overlap runs from 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. ET. In UTC, New York times shift on the US dates and London times on the UK dates.

If you run a robot, also check what your server clock does in those weeks: some brokers change it on the US calendar, so the difference between your chart and your own clock can shift for a few days.

From Friday to Sunday: the weekly close and the opening gap

Friday afternoon in New York

With London closed and New York winding down, late Friday usually brings thinner liquidity and wider spreads. And an open position faces almost two days when you can’t do anything with it: whatever happens over the weekend hits the price all at once at the reopen. That’s why some strategies close before the weekend, while others hold their positions and accept the reopening risk.

AUREUM’s guide is specific about this: the robot has an automatic Friday close at 20:40 broker server time (the time you see in Market Watch), and you don’t need to touch anything over the weekend. That close only happens if the robot is running at that moment. If you’ve paused it with the Algo Trading button (“AutoTrading” in older versions), or the connection is down, MT5 is closed or the computer is asleep, the trade stays open over the weekend with its stop and target on the broker’s server.

The gap at the Sunday reopen

The first price on Sunday evening doesn’t have to look anything like Friday’s last one: if something big happened over the weekend, gold can open several dollars higher or lower without trading the levels in between. That’s the opening gap, and a stop that falls inside it is filled beyond its level, at the first available price. We walk through an example with numbers in stop loss, take profit and break-even.

Gold market hours and trading robots: what has to stay on

The advantage of a robot is that you don’t have to be at the screen at 2:00 a.m. or at 8:30 a.m. ET. But an Expert Advisor only works while MetaTrader 5 is open and connected: if gold trades from Sunday evening to Friday evening, the computer running MT5 has to be on for those same hours.

AUREUM’s guide boils this down to three conditions: MT5 open, with the XAU/USD chart on H1 and the robot on it; the computer on and never going to sleep (the screen can turn off, the computer can’t); and a stable internet connection. Open trades keep their stop and target on the broker’s server, so an outage doesn’t leave them unprotected, but while it lasts the robot can’t manage them or carry out the Friday close.

The alternative is a VPS, a computer in the cloud that stays on when you turn yours off; AUREUM’s guide offers it as the way to keep the robot trading 24 hours a day, five days a week. We explain what it is and what to look for when you rent one in what is a trading VPS.

If you ever want to pause it, MT5 has a master switch: the Algo Trading button on the top toolbar. What happens to open trades when you switch it off is explained in our economic calendar for gold article; here, just remember to switch it back on, and that every manual pause moves your account further away from the system that was tested.

In short: check your broker’s hours, note the difference between server time and your own, mark the mismatch weeks and holidays and, if you use a robot, keep the machine running it switched on while gold trades. To see why gold behaves differently from a currency pair, read how to trade gold (XAU/USD).