Which warm cities keep a full London working day?

Published 2026-08-01 · last checked 2026-08-01 · written and calculated in-house by timedatelive

There is a very short list of places where you can live somewhere warm, work a completely normal British day, and never once do arithmetic before sending a calendar invite. It is short because the earth is mostly ocean at this longitude.

Twenty-six cities in our dataset share all eight hours of a London working day in January. 16 of them keep it in July too. Here is the whole list, with the seasonal catch spelled out.

Short answer

Las Palmas at $1,700 a month, Porto at $1,700 and Funchal at $1,800 are the three that combine a full London day with a mild winter and infrastructure a remote worker can rely on. All three stay aligned with the UK year-round, because they follow the same daylight-saving calendar.

Accra and the rest of Ghana are cheaper and warmer still, and share the full eight hours in January — but Ghana does not observe daylight saving, so in July the overlap falls to 7h. That is the whole catch, and it is a real one.

City	Country	Zone	Jan	Jul	Cost/mo	Internet	Safety
Tamale	Ghana	Africa/Accra	8h	7h	$1,000	3.3	4.0
Cape Coast	Ghana	Africa/Accra	8h	7h	$1,100	3.4	4.0
Takoradi	Ghana	Africa/Accra	8h	7h	$1,100	3.5	3.9
Kumasi	Ghana	Africa/Accra	8h	7h	$1,200	3.6	3.9
Accra	Ghana	Africa/Accra	8h	7h	$1,500	3.8	3.9
Las Palmas	Spain	Atlantic/Canary	8h	8h	$1,700	4.2	4.5
Porto	Portugal	Europe/Lisbon	8h	8h	$1,700	4.4	4.5
Funchal	Portugal	Atlantic/Madeira	8h	8h	$1,800	4.2	4.7
Lagos	Portugal	Europe/Lisbon	8h	8h	$1,900	3.9	4.6
Ericeira	Portugal	Europe/Lisbon	8h	8h	$2,000	4.0	4.6
Lisbon	Portugal	Europe/Lisbon	8h	8h	$2,100	4.6	4.4
Glasgow	United Kingdom	Europe/London	8h	8h	$2,300	4.4	4.1
Kilkenny	Ireland	Europe/Dublin	8h	8h	$2,300	4.2	4.5
Limerick	Ireland	Europe/Dublin	8h	8h	$2,400	4.3	4.2
Manchester	United Kingdom	Europe/London	8h	8h	$2,500	4.5	4.1
Bristol	United Kingdom	Europe/London	8h	8h	$2,600	4.4	4.2
Galway	Ireland	Europe/Dublin	8h	8h	$2,600	4.3	4.5
Cork	Ireland	Europe/Dublin	8h	8h	$2,700	4.4	4.4
Edinburgh	United Kingdom	Europe/London	8h	8h	$2,700	4.4	4.5
Keflavík	Iceland	Atlantic/Reykjavik	8h	7h	$3,000	4.7	4.9
Selfoss	Iceland	Atlantic/Reykjavik	8h	7h	$3,100	4.7	4.9
Akureyri	Iceland	Atlantic/Reykjavik	8h	7h	$3,200	4.7	4.9
Dublin	Ireland	Europe/Dublin	8h	8h	$3,300	4.5	4.3
Hafnarfjörður	Iceland	Atlantic/Reykjavik	8h	7h	$3,300	4.8	4.9
Reykjavík	Iceland	Atlantic/Reykjavik	8h	7h	$3,600	4.8	4.9
London	United Kingdom	Europe/London	8h	8h	$3,800	4.6	4.2

Cities sharing all eight hours of a 09:00–17:00 London working day in January. The July column shows what happens when Britain moves to summer time and the other country does not. Internet and safety are our 0–5 scores.

The three that actually work

Las Palmas is the strongest single answer on this list. The Canaries are on Atlantic/Canary, which tracks London through both clock changes, so the overlap is eight hours in January and eight in July. Our data gives it an internet score of 4.2 and a safety score of 4.5, both near the top of anywhere at $1,700 a month, and its December daylight — 10h 21m — is the longest of any European city we track.

Porto and Lisbon are on Europe/Lisbon, which is the same clock as London all year. Porto is $400 a month cheaper than Lisbon with a marginally lower internet score (4.4 against 4.6). Neither is warm in the way the Canaries are warm; Atlantic Portugal in January is mild and wet rather than sunny.

Funchal — Madeira — is the compromise: warmer than mainland Portugal, cheaper than Lisbon, 10h 00m of December daylight, and a safety score of 4.7. It is also small, which some people find restful and others find claustrophobic after six weeks.

The Ghana question

Ghana is genuinely interesting and genuinely underrated. Accra is $1,500 a month, Takoradi and Cape Coast are $1,100, and the whole country sits on Africa/Accra, which is UTC+0 with no daylight saving ever. From late October to late March that is precisely London time.

From the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October, Britain is an hour ahead and Ghana is not, so your 09:00 becomes London’s 10:00 and the overlap drops to 7h. In practice that means starting an hour earlier for seven months of the year, which is manageable but is not the same as not thinking about it.

The other honest caveat is connectivity. Ghana’s internet scores in our data run from 3.3 to 3.8, against 4.2 for Las Palmas. For writing and asynchronous work that is fine. For a job that is mostly live video, it is a downgrade you will notice.

Iceland is on the list and should not be on your shortlist

Reykjavík shares the full eight hours in January because Iceland is UTC+0 year-round. It is on this table for completeness and it is a bad answer to the question most people are asking, because Reykjavík gets 4h 07m of daylight on the shortest day of the year. Perfect clock alignment does not compensate for that. If you want the numbers, we did the daylight comparison separately.

How this list was built. We computed the intersection of a 09:00–17:00 London day and a 09:00–17:00 local day for every city in our dataset, twice — once on 15 January 2027 and once on 15 July 2027 — using the IANA time zone database so each country’s daylight-saving rules for those dates are applied as written. Eight hours means complete overlap. No estimate is involved; you can reproduce it with any correct time zone library.

What to do about the UK's clock change

If you settle somewhere that does not follow the British calendar, you have two options and only two. Either you move your own working day by an hour in late March and back in late October, which is exactly what everyone in Britain does anyway, or you accept a seven-hour overlap for seven months. Seven hours of a British day still covers 09:00 to 16:00 in London, which is where nearly all meetings live.

The people who get caught out are the ones who never checked, discovered the shift in April, and had already committed to a lease.

Cities that come close but miss

Morocco is the near miss worth knowing about. Marrakech at $1,200 and Taghazout at $1,100 get 7h with London in January and 8h in July, because Morocco keeps permanent UTC+1 and steps back only for Ramadan. Seven hours is a workable British day and Morocco is warmer and cheaper than everything above it on the list.

Cape Verde is the other one: Praia gets 7h in January, and unusually it is one of the very few places that also holds a serious New York overlap. That combination has its own page.

Common follow-up questions

What is the cheapest city with a full London working day?

Tamale in northern Ghana, at $1,000 a month. Among cities most people would actually consider, Cape Coast at $1,100 and Takoradi at $1,100. All of Ghana loses an hour of overlap in the British summer.

Do the Canary Islands really use the same clock as the UK?

Yes. The Canaries are on Western European Time, one hour behind mainland Spain, and they change clocks on the same dates as the UK because both follow the EU and UK daylight-saving calendars, which currently align. So the overlap is eight hours in every month.

Is Madeira better than the Canaries for this?

For clock alignment they are identical. For daylight, the Canaries win: Las Palmas gets 10h 21m on 21 December against 10h 00m for Funchal. Madeira is cheaper and greener; the Canaries are drier and better connected.

Does eight hours of overlap mean I never have to compromise?

It means the arithmetic never bites you. It does not mean the culture around you keeps the same hours — Portugal and Spain both eat and finish later than Britain does, and in Ghana the working day starts earlier. Overlap is about clocks, not habits.