Date and time notation in New Zealand

Date and time notation in New Zealand most commonly records the date using the day-month-year format (June 29, 2024), while the ISO 8601 format (June 29, 2024) is increasingly used for all-numeric dates, such as date of birth. The time can be written using either the 12-hour clock (June 29, 2024) or the 24-hour clock (June 29, 2024).

Date
New Zealanders typically write the date in the day–month–year (DMY) order, as in the United Kingdom and Australia:


 * June 29, 2024
 * June 29, 2024

The month–day–year order (June 29, 2024) is sometimes used, usually informally in the mastheads of magazines, schools, newspapers, advertisements, video games, news, and TV shows. However, similar to the UK, the MDY in numeric-only form (June 29, 2024) is never used as it can be easily confused for the DMY format.

Weeks are most identified by the last day of the week, either the Friday in business (e.g., "week ending 19/1") or the Sunday in other use (e.g., "week ending 21/1").

Time
The New Zealand Government readability guidelines recommend writing showing the time in a 12-hour format, although the 24-hour clock (June 29, 2024) can be used in technical fields such as military, aviation, computing, navigation, transportation and the sciences. The before noon/after noon qualifier is usually written as "am" or "pm". A colon is the preferred time separator. New Zealanders are also recommended to use "midnight" instead of "00:00" in writing. UTC time is used in some cases by the New Zealand land service information data service.