Forex does not open on Monday morning the way a stock exchange might. The currency market is a network of banks, dealers, and brokers rather than a single venue, so its week begins when the first major centres start working, and that happens while it is still Sunday in the Americas.
The simple version
When it is Sunday evening in New York, it is already Monday morning in Sydney. The Sydney session is the first of the four named sessions, so the forex week is treated as starting at roughly 5:00 PM Sunday, New York time.
In UTC that is:
- 9:00 PM UTC while the United States is on daylight time, from March to early November.
- 10:00 PM UTC while the United States is on standard time.
In India, those moments fall in the early hours of Monday: about 2:30 AM IST or 3:30 AM IST. In London the open is usually about 10:00 PM on Sunday, and it moves an hour earlier in the weeks when the US and Europe are on different clocks. The clock gap guide lists those weeks.
Why the exact minute varies
There is no official bell. The 5:00 PM New York convention is widely used, but each broker and platform decides when it begins accepting orders and when quotes start flowing. Some start a few minutes earlier or later, and a few add a short maintenance gap. If your strategy or schedule depends on the exact minute, check your broker's published hours instead of relying on a general rule.
How it lines up with the sessions
On this site, the Sydney session is defined as 7:00 AM to 4:00 PM Sydney time on weekdays. Sydney's own clock changes between daylight and standard time, so the UTC moment that Monday 7:00 AM falls on moves by an hour at different times of year. The Sydney session page shows the current hours in your timezone, and the forex week begins as that session gets under way.
Tokyo follows a few hours later, then London, then New York. The forex sessions guide covers how the four sessions pass the baton through the day.
What the first hours look like
The first hours of the week usually have fewer participants than later in the day, because only the Asia-Pacific centres are active. Typically that means lower liquidity and wider spreads. If the news over the weekend changed expectations, the first prices of the week may differ from Friday's last prices. This is a description of how the market is structured, not a prediction about direction.
The weekly close
At the other end, the week is treated as ending around 5:00 PM New York time on Friday, when the New York session finishes and the other major centres are already closed for the weekend. From then until Sunday evening, there is no regular forex trading, even though crypto continues.
Holidays
Because forex has no single exchange, there is no universal holiday calendar. Individual currencies can be quiet when their home country is on a bank holiday, and brokers sometimes close early around Christmas and New Year. Check the broker's notices for those dates.
Hours here are for reference only. Verify with your broker and the official source before trading.