What Time the Futures Market Opens in Your Country, and When It Changes
Updated October 16, 2026
The fixed time is New York's#
U.S. index futures have a regular session from 9:30 to 16:00 New York time, the same as the stock market. Most of the heaviest macro releases come out at 8:30, and the futures session reopens on Sunday at 18:00, with a daily pause from 17:00 to 18:00. All of that is set in New York time and does not change.
What changes is the gap with your clock. New York moves its clock forward in March and back in November; Europe does it on other dates; Chile on its own dates and the other way round, because it is in the southern hemisphere; and Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Argentina and Brazil do not change. So the same open lands at different times through the year, and there are odd weeks when only one side has moved its clock.
The open in your local time, season by season#
Regular-session open (9:30 New York), in local time. Dates follow the 2026 and 2027 calendars:
Until 24 October 2026: Madrid 15:30 · Mexico City 7:30 · Bogotá and Lima 8:30 · Santiago, Buenos Aires and São Paulo 10:30.
25 to 31 October 2026 (Europe has already moved back, the U.S. not yet): Madrid 14:30 · the rest unchanged.
1 November 2026 to 13 March 2027: Madrid 15:30 · Mexico City 8:30 · Bogotá and Lima 9:30 · Santiago, Buenos Aires and São Paulo 11:30.
14 to 27 March 2027 (the U.S. has moved forward, Europe not yet): Madrid 14:30 · Mexico City 7:30 · Bogotá and Lima 8:30 · Santiago, Buenos Aires and São Paulo 10:30.
From 28 March 2027: Madrid goes back to 15:30. And from 4 April 2027, when Chile moves its clock back, Santiago moves to 9:30 until September.
The 16:00 New York close comes six and a half hours after the open in any country, and the 8:30 releases one hour before it.
Why being on time matters#
An hour off is not a detail in the first minutes of the session. In the ES regular session, the final high or low of the day first traded in the first 30 minutes in 54.3% of sessions, and in the first hour in 72.5%, over 4,199 sessions since 2010.
This does not say which of the two extremes gets set or which way the day goes. It says the open concentrates much of what defines the range, and that showing up an hour late because of a clock change means missing exactly that stretch.
Does the first half hour set the session's high or low?
ES
Swipe to see the sample →
| What is set | % of sessions | Sessions |
|---|---|---|
| High or low in the first 30 minutes | 54.3% | 2,280 |
| High or low in the first 60 minutes | 72.5% | 3,044 |
| Only the high (30 minutes) | 24.1% | 1,011 |
| Only the low (30 minutes) | 29.8% | 1,252 |
| Both (30 minutes) | 0.4% | 17 |
n = 4,199 · 2010-06-07 to 2026-10-09 · historical futures data
ES regular session (9:30-16:00 ET), 7-Jun-2010 to 9-Oct-2026. Set = the session's final high (or low) first traded between 9:30 and 10:00 ET (until 10:30 in the 60-minute row) and the rest of the session did not exceed it; if price later only equals it, it still counts as set early. 'Only the high' and 'only the low' leave out the sessions in which both were set. 'Sessions' = the number of sessions in which it happened, out of the total shown below. 95% confidence interval of the first row: 52.8-55.8%. With the sessions from 2022 on only: 53.7% in 30 minutes and 71.6% in 60 (n = 1231). Every session with at least 60 traded minutes counts, early closes included. It is what happened, not a signal.
The weekly report, every Sunday
One email a week: what moved the macro picture, next week's calendar, rates and COT positioning, and the new study with its sample size. No signals; unsubscribe in one click.
The 8:30 releases and the Sunday reopen#
With the October gap, an 8:30 New York release comes out at 9:30 in Santiago, Buenos Aires and São Paulo, 7:30 in Bogotá and Lima, 6:30 in Mexico City and 14:30 in Madrid. From 1 November, everything is one hour later in Latin America; in Madrid it goes back to 14:30 after the odd week when it lands at 13:30.
The Sunday 18:00 New York reopen is at 19:00 in Santiago and Buenos Aires until October and at 20:00 from November. In Madrid it is midnight from Sunday to Monday, except on Sunday 25 October, when it opens at 23:00.
How not to get it wrong#
Write everything down in New York time and convert it, instead of memorizing your local time: New York time is the one that does not change. Most platforms let you choose the chart time zone; if yours is set to local time, the open lines will move on their own in the change weeks, so check them.
Check the week's release calendar with the same conversion and mark the odd weeks: the last week of October in Europe and the two in mid-March in the Americas. On this site, the daily brief and the calendar always show New York time (ET), so a clock change does not move them. This content is for information only and is not investment advice.
Free PDF: 20 futures figures with their sample
The figures from our studies on one sheet, each with its n and date range (in Spanish for now). Subscribe to the weekly report and download it right away; the link also comes in the welcome email.
Frequently asked questions
- What time does the S&P 500 open in Chile?
- The regular session opens at 9:30 New York time. In Santiago that is 10:30 until 31 October 2026, 11:30 from 1 November to 13 March 2027, 10:30 again from 14 March, and 9:30 from 4 April 2027, when Chile moves its clock back.
- And in Spain?
- In Madrid the open is at 15:30 most of the year. There are two exceptions when it is at 14:30: one week in October, 25 to 31 October 2026, and two weeks in March, 14 to 27 March 2027, when Europe and the U.S. have not changed their clocks at the same time.
- Does the New York session schedule change?
- No. The regular session runs from 9:30 to 16:00 New York time all year. What changes is the gap with your country when one of the two moves its clock.
These numbers, instrument by instrument
See all 30 instruments →These base rates, on your chart
The indicator is open source and free: it marks each session's Initial Balance and gap, and prints beside them the historical rate at which that bucket fills, with its sample size. Same data as the tables above.
How to cite this data
The tables on this page are our own work, built from historical futures data. You may reproduce them, translate them or build on them, including commercially, as long as you credit the source and link back to the original page. If you use them, tell us: we like knowing what they get used for.
Licence: CC BY 4.0
Suggested citation:
Perfiltrade (October 16, 2026). What Time the Futures Market Opens in Your Country, and When It Changes. https://www.perfiltrade.com/en/learn/what-time-the-futures-market-opens-in-your-country
Try these concepts with real data
14 days free, no card. An analysis tool, not investment advice.
See plans →