Lat Long to UTM Converter

How to convert latitude and longitude to UTM

1. Enter the latitude and longitude. Type them in decimal degrees (40.689306, -74.0445) or in degrees-minutes-seconds (40°41'21.5"N). South and west are negative, or use the S and W letters.
2. Leave the zone on Auto. The UTM zone is worked out from the longitude, including the special zones over Norway and Svalbard. Force a zone only when you need to match an existing project in a neighbouring zone.
3. Click Convert. The zone with its latitude band, the hemisphere, the easting and the northing in metres appear, each with a copy button.
4. Or convert a list. Paste many coordinate pairs, one per line, and download the results as a CSV.

How the UTM zone is chosen

The world is split into 60 zones, each 6 degrees of longitude wide, numbered from 1 at 180° W eastward. The zone for a longitude is:

zone = floor((longitude + 180) / 6) + 1

So New York (74° W) is in zone 18, Jaipur (75.8° E) in zone 43 and Sydney (151.2° E) in zone 56. Two regions break the regular grid: zone 32 is widened over south-western Norway (56° to 64° N, 3° to 12° E), and Svalbard uses zones 31, 33, 35 and 37 between 72° and 84° N. This converter applies both exceptions.

The letter after the zone number is the latitude band, in 8° steps from C (80° S) to X (72° to 84° N). Bands N to X are in the northern hemisphere and C to M in the southern.

Worked example

Convert 40.689306° N, 74.044500° W. The longitude falls in zone 18 (central meridian 75° W), and the latitude is in band T. The transverse Mercator projection on the WGS84 ellipsoid, with a scale of 0.9996 on the central meridian and a false easting of 500,000 m, gives:

zone 18T  (northern hemisphere)
easting   = 580735.74 m
northing  = 4504706.93 m

In the southern hemisphere a false northing of 10,000,000 m is added. Sydney (-33.8688, 151.2093) gives zone 56H, easting 334368.63 m and northing 6250948.35 m.

Formats this converter understands

Common mistakes

• Latitude and longitude the wrong way round. Latitude (north-south, -90 to 90) comes first. A latitude above 90 is rejected, and the message tells you so.
• Missing sign. A point in the Americas with a positive longitude is placed in Asia, so you get the wrong zone. West and south must be negative, or use the W and S letters.
• Forgetting the hemisphere. A UTM northing alone does not say which hemisphere it is in. Always keep the zone and hemisphere with the numbers.
• Forcing the wrong zone. A forced zone is accepted only when the point is within 12° of its central meridian, and accuracy falls the farther you go from it. Use Auto unless you are matching an existing project.
• Datum. The result is on WGS84. If your latitude and longitude are on another datum such as NAD27, convert the datum first with the CRS Converter.

What this converter does and does not do

• WGS84 only. Latitude and longitude are taken as WGS84, and the UTM result is on WGS84.
• UTM range only. UTM covers 80°S to 84°N. Points closer to the poles are rejected; they use the polar UPS grid, which is not covered here.
• Not MGRS. The output is zone, easting and northing, not an MGRS grid reference.
• Accuracy. It uses a high-order series for the projection, checked against the PROJ library on several thousand points around the world; results agree to far better than a millimetre.
• Runs in your browser. No coordinates are sent to a server.

Related converters

To go the other way, use UTM to lat long. If your coordinates are in degrees-minutes-seconds, see DMS to decimal degrees. To reproject a whole shapefile, follow the guide Reproject a shapefile to UTM.