ICT Kill Zones and the Clock Change: When London Opens at 4 AM New York Time

ICT kill zones (often written killzones) are almost always quoted as fixed New York times, with London running from 2 to 5 AM and New York from 7 to 10 AM. For most of the year they also sit around the opening they’re named after. It works because London and New York switch to and from daylight saving time (DST) within a few weeks of each other, so the five hours between the two cities stay five hours. Between those two changes the gap shrinks to four. In autumn 2026 that happened from 26 to 30 October. Next spring it lasts two weeks, from 15 to 26 March 2027, and next autumn it falls on 1 to 5 November 2027.

The London box is still drawn at the same New York hours in those weeks. The London open inside it lands an hour later than usual, at 4 AM instead of 3, and nothing on the chart points that out. Below are the exact dates, what the shift does to the box and its pivots, and a NinjaTrader time zone setting that can leave a chart an hour off for the whole winter.

What is the ICT London kill zone?

ICT writes kill zones in New York time, and each one sits around another market’s opening. The London window starts an hour before London’s trading desks and stock exchange open at 8 AM local time. It runs through their first two hours, which the method treats as the most active part of the night. Many ICT traders watch it for a sweep of the range that Asia left behind. The ICT kill zones are defined in New York time, and ICT doesn’t adjust them when Europe changes its clocks. Many traders, though, use the London window for what normally happens inside it: the hour before London’s 8 AM open and its first two hours. Both readings give the same box for most of the year. In the weeks below, they don’t.

Daylight saving 2026–2028: when London is only four hours ahead

The EU and the UK change their clocks on the last Sunday of March and October, while the US changes on the second Sunday of March and the first Sunday of November (NIST; for the EU, Directive 2000/84/EC). New York switches between EST (UTC−5) and EDT (UTC−4), London between GMT and BST, and Frankfurt between CET and CEST. In autumn Europe goes first and in spring America does, and for the days in between London is only four hours ahead of New York. The “Frankfurt open” column is the mark ICT traders put an hour before London, at 8 AM Frankfurt time.

Period	London open (8 AM London) in New York time	ICT “Frankfurt open” in New York time	Hours of London inside the 2–5 AM box
Until 23 Oct 2026	3 AM	2 AM	2
26–30 Oct 2026 (Europe on winter time, US still on summer time)	4 AM	3 AM	1
2 Nov 2026 – 12 Mar 2027	3 AM	2 AM	2
15–26 Mar 2027 (US on summer time, Europe not yet)	4 AM	3 AM	1
29 Mar – 29 Oct 2027	3 AM	2 AM	2
1–5 Nov 2027 (Europe on winter time, US still on summer time)	4 AM	3 AM	1
8 Nov 2027 – 10 Mar 2028	3 AM	2 AM	2
13–24 Mar 2028 (US on summer time, Europe not yet)	4 AM	3 AM	1
27 Mar – 27 Oct 2028	3 AM	2 AM	2
30 Oct – 3 Nov 2028 (Europe on winter time, US still on summer time)	4 AM	3 AM	1

The autumn gap is always one week, because the US always changes seven days after Europe. The spring gap is two or three weeks depending on the year. In 2026 it ran from 9 to 27 March.

Our Kill Zones indicator for NinjaTrader 8 keeps these sessions on New York time through every clock change, with no settings to touch. It comes with a five-day free trial.

How daylight saving shifts the London kill zone

In a normal week the London box opens with Frankfurt at 2 AM and London comes in an hour later. That leaves two hours of the box to watch London’s first push. In the gap weeks Frankfurt opens at 3 AM, London at 4 AM, and only one hour of the box remains once London is trading. The first two hours are the time before London opens, including ICT’s Frankfurt open at 3 AM. If you plot the box’s high and low as pivots, they are built mostly from those hours that week, with London’s first hour squeezed in at the end.

Here is the same 6E (EUR/USD futures) chart on five-minute bars in two different weeks. Its clock is set to a European time zone one hour ahead of London, so London’s 8 AM open reads 9:00 in both screenshots.

In the gap week (28 October 2025) the London box starts at 7:00 on this chart. London opens at 9:00, two hours in, and gets the last hour of the box. The New York box starts at 12:00.

In a normal week (21 October 2025) the box starts at 8:00, so London opens one hour in and has two hours of the box. The New York box starts at 13:00. Both boxes sit an hour later on this chart than in the gap week, because Europe changed its clocks between the two weeks and New York didn’t. London’s open stayed at 9:00.

The box is fixed in New York time, so whether it moves on your chart, and in which week, depends on your platform’s time zone. London’s open is shown in the same chart time.

Chart time zone	Until 23 Oct	26–30 Oct	From 2 Nov	London open on the chart
New York	02:00–05:00	02:00–05:00	02:00–05:00	03:00 → 04:00 → 03:00
London	07:00–10:00	06:00–09:00	07:00–10:00	08:00 all year
Central Europe	08:00–11:00	07:00–10:00	08:00–11:00	09:00 all year
UTC	06:00–09:00	06:00–09:00	07:00–10:00	07:00 → 08:00 → 08:00

On a UTC chart the box doesn’t move until 2 November, a week after London’s open has.

How much this matters depends on what your rule is about. Say your edge is tied to the New York clock, for example because it’s about overnight liquidity before US traders arrive. Then nothing has changed. If your edge is tied to London coming in, that week’s box holds only one hour of London, right at its end.

The indicator itself needs no adjusting. It keeps its sessions on New York’s clock and switches between winter and summer time automatically, whatever time zone your NinjaTrader uses, so the London box sits at 2 to 5 AM New York time every week of the year. What changes in the gap weeks is the market inside it. If your rule follows London, you can add a second box that tracks it for those days. The section on marking the London open below shows how.

Asia moves for most of the year

Japan doesn’t use daylight saving time, so Tokyo’s 9 AM open moves against New York every spring and autumn. From November to March it falls at 7 PM New York time, and for the rest of the year at 8 PM. An Asia box set at 19:00 to 22:00, as in the settings below, starts on the Tokyo open in winter and an hour ahead of it in summer. That shift lasts about eight months a year, far longer than the London gap. It gets noticed less because there’s no single week when it changes. Here too nothing needs changing in the indicator: it’s the Tokyo open that moves against the box.

The panel labels the session times EST, which is how Windows names New York’s time zone all year round, summer included. The same naming habit trips people up in NinjaTrader’s own time zone list.

The time zone that says UTC−5 all year

In a NinjaTrader forum thread from June 2026, one user couldn’t find New York’s summer time in the list. So they picked another city: “there is only newyork utc-5 which is winter . there must be EDT newyork -4UTC. can t find it in ninjatrader , so i chose caracas,venezuela -4UTC” (stec_der, NinjaTrader Forum, Jun 2026).

NinjaTrader’s time zone list uses the Windows zone names. Windows labels New York’s zone “(UTC-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)” all year, although the zone itself moves to UTC−4 every summer. Caracas sits at UTC−4 with no daylight saving at all. In June the two cities show the same time, so the chart looked right. From 1 November New York drops back to UTC−5 while Caracas stays where it is. Until March, every bar on that chart will read an hour later than New York.

The first reply asked: “Is there an option for daylight savings that you are missing?” (Rockmanx00, NinjaTrader Forum, Jun 2026). In effect there is, because the Eastern Time zone already includes it. For anyone writing session times into their own NinjaScript, a NinjaTrader ecosystem vendor in an older thread gave the general rule. Their advice is to “create your custom trading hours in the exchange time zone, much like the built-in templates do”, and seasonal offsets are then “handled automatically” (Steve_NinjaMastery, NinjaTrader Forum, Jul 2025).

The same applies if you trade from Europe or Asia. Choose the named zone for your own city under Tools → Options → General, and avoid a different city that only happens to share today’s offset. The Kill Zones indicator reads that setting too and converts its New York sessions into whatever zone NinjaTrader uses. Its boxes therefore land at the right moments even with Caracas selected. What goes wrong is the chart’s clock, which reads an hour off New York all winter.

Marking the London open itself

If you want to see where London actually opens, a custom session can mark it as its own block. The chart below shows one set to London’s first hour on 6E in a normal week. The times you enter are New York time, whatever time zone your NinjaTrader uses. This chart uses the same European clock as the earlier screenshots, so the block reads 09:00–10:00 on its axis.

Here the custom session is set to 03:00–04:00 New York time, London’s first hour, and reads 09:00–10:00 on the chart. On this day the jump in volume came an hour earlier, at 08:00 on this chart, when Frankfurt opened and the ICT London box began, and London’s open brought no clear second jump. The euro trades heavily in Frankfurt as well as London, so on 6E the jump doesn’t reliably come at London’s open. Some days it comes with Frankfurt, some days with London, as in the gap-week chart below. That is why the marker helps: on 6E, volume alone won’t show you where London opens.

In the gap weeks both opens move an hour later on the New York clock. Frankfurt’s lands at 3 AM, an hour into the ICT box, and London’s at 4 AM, right where the 03:00–04:00 block ends. If nothing lines up with either the ICT box or the block over several days, check the platform’s time zone first.

In the gap weeks (next: 15 to 26 March 2027, then 1 to 5 November 2027), the same custom session can do a second job. Set it to 03:00–06:00 New York time and name it “London (local)”. It then sits an hour after the ICT box and covers the same London hours the ICT box covers in a normal week: the hour before London opens and its first two hours. Use the custom session rather than editing the London times, because changing those redraws every past London box at the new hours too. There is one custom session, so set it back to 03:00–04:00 after the gap week if you use it as the open marker.

On 28 October 2025, a gap week, the ICT box sits at 07:00–10:00 on this chart and the London (local) box at 08:00–11:00. London opens at 9:00, one hour into the London (local) box, the same place it sits in the ICT box in a normal week. London’s open also brought the morning’s biggest volume bar, while Frankfurt’s at 08:00 brought only a small rise.

Which clock your ICT kill zones follow

For three to four weeks a year the London kill zone and the London open disagree, and for most of the year the Asia box and the Tokyo open do. What matters is knowing, before the next gap week (15 March 2027), whether your rule follows New York’s clock or another market’s opening, and reading that week’s boxes with it in mind.

The NinjaTrader Kill Zones Indicator draws the Asia, London and New York sessions plus one custom session, with session pivots and the day open. You can run it on the €25 monthly plan, which also unlocks our other indicators and the trade copiers and starts with five free days. A single licence for this indicator costs €175 once.

See the Kill Zones Indicator →

Need something custom built? We develop automation to order → NinjaTrader developers

ICT kill zones: FAQ

Do ICT kill zones change with daylight saving time?

No. ICT defines them in New York time all year, and the London kill zone stays at 2 to 5 AM New York time. What changes is the London open inside it: in the weeks when Europe and the US are on different clocks, London opens at 4 AM New York time instead of 3.

What time is the London kill zone in New York time?

In ICT’s usual definition it runs from 2 to 5 AM New York time, around the London open at 3 AM. In the weeks when Europe and the US are on different clock settings, London opens at 4 AM New York time. Those are 26 to 30 October 2026 and 15 to 26 March 2027.

Which time zone should I choose in NinjaTrader 8?

The named zone for your own city. For New York that’s Eastern Time (US & Canada), which switches to summer time automatically even though its label shows UTC−05:00.

Are ICT kill zones adjusted for the clock change?

No. ICT defines them in New York time all year. If you use the London box for London’s open, the weeks when Europe and the US are on different clocks are the exception. Those are 26–30 October 2026 and 15–26 March 2027.

Why did the box move on my chart in a different week from the article?

The box is fixed in New York time, and your chart shows it in your platform’s time zone. On a UTC or New York chart it moves in different weeks than on a European chart. See the table in What changes inside the London box.