UTM Zone Finder

How to find the UTM zone of a location

1. Enter the latitude and longitude. Decimal degrees or DMS both work. West and south are negative, or use the W and S letters.
2. Click Convert. The zone number and latitude band appear, with the hemisphere, central meridian and EPSG code.
3. Use the EPSG code in your GIS. Enter it in QGIS, ArcGIS or pyproj to reproject your data to that zone. The PROJ string is shown for command-line tools.
4. Or look up a zone number. Enter a zone from 1 to 60 in the second box to see its longitude range, central meridian and EPSG codes.
5. Or look up a list. Paste many points, one per line, and download the table as a CSV.

How a UTM zone is determined

UTM divides the world between 80° S and 84° N into 60 zones, each 6 degrees of longitude wide, numbered eastward from 180° W. The regular rule is:

zone = floor((longitude + 180) / 6) + 1
central meridian = zone × 6 - 183

The latitude band is a letter from C (80° S) to X (72° to 84° N) in 8° steps, skipping I and O. Bands N to X are in the northern hemisphere and C to M in the southern. The zone and band together form the grid zone designator, for example 43R.

The Norway and Svalbard exceptions

Two places break the regular grid, and the zone finder applies both:

• South-west Norway. In band V (56° to 64° N), zone 32 is widened to cover 3° to 12° E, so Bergen and Oslo share a zone. Zone 31 is correspondingly narrower there.
• Svalbard. In band X (72° to 84° N), zones 32, 34 and 36 are not used. Zones 31, 33, 35 and 37 are widened instead.

Two examples where the exception changes the answer: Bergen (60.39° N, 5.32° E) is in zone 32V, although the regular rule would give zone 31, and a point on Svalbard at 78° N, 10° E is in zone 33X, although the regular rule would give zone 32. The page tells you when a special zone applies.

Example zones

WGS84 UTM EPSG codes follow a pattern: 326 followed by the zone for the northern hemisphere, and 327 followed by the zone for the southern. Zone 43N is 32643 and zone 56S is 32756.

UTM zones by country

These are the zones that cover most of each country. Large countries span many zones, so use the point lookup above for an exact answer.

Choosing a zone for data that spans several zones

• If your area sits mostly in one zone, use that zone for all of it. the scale error is about 0.04% too small on the central meridian and grows to about 0.1% too large at the zone edge; a zone can be used a little beyond its edge with slightly larger distortion.
• If the data straddles a zone boundary and you need accurate distances or areas, consider a local projection instead, or an equal-area or Lambert projection suited to the region.
• Do not mix zones in one layer. Reproject everything to a single zone before measuring.

What this tool does and does not do

• WGS84 codes. The EPSG code is for WGS 84 / UTM. If your data uses NAD83, ETRS89 or another datum, the matching UTM code is different, for example EPSG:26918 for NAD83 zone 18N.
• UTM range only. UTM is defined from 80° S to 84° N. Points closer to the poles use the polar UPS grid, which is not covered here.
• Zone only. To get the easting and northing, use lat long to UTM.
• Runs in your browser. No coordinates are sent to a server.

Related converters

Convert the point itself with lat long to UTM or UTM to lat long. For grid references see lat long to MGRS. To reproject a whole shapefile, follow the guide Reproject a shapefile to UTM.