When Does the Silver Market Open?
Quick answer: CME Globex runs US silver futures from 5:00 p.m. on Sunday until 4:00 p.m. on Friday, Central time, pausing for an hour at 4:00 p.m. Central on each afternoon from Monday to Thursday, according to the broker MetroTrade. Adding one hour for Eastern time, that is Sunday 6:00 p.m. to Friday 5:00 p.m. ET, with the daily pause from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. ET. London's benchmark auction starts at noon London time, and Shanghai trades in a day session and a night session of its own.
| Venue | Local hours | Eastern time (ET) |
|---|---|---|
| COMEX silver futures (CME Globex) · open now | Sun 5:00 p.m. to Fri 4:00 p.m. CT; daily break 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. CT, Mon–Thu | Sun 6:00 p.m. to Fri 5:00 p.m.; pause 5:00 to 6:00 p.m., Mon–Thu |
| LBMA Silver Price auction (London) · open now | Once a day at 12:00 noon London time | 7:00 a.m. (8:00 a.m. in the weeks when US and UK clocks change on different dates) |
| Shanghai Gold Exchange, day session · open now | 9:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Beijing time | 8:00 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. the evening before (EST); 9:00 p.m. to 3:30 a.m. (EDT) |
| Shanghai Gold Exchange, night session · open now | 8:00 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. Beijing time | 7:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. (EST); 8:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. (EDT) |
The table puts every venue on one clock, Eastern time, so you can see which markets overlap. If your browser runs scripts, the session open at this moment is highlighted; without scripts the table still lists every session in full. The live silver price, with the time it was read, is on our silver market price chart.
Why the US hours are given in Central time
CME Group, which runs COMEX, is based in Chicago, and brokers quote its hours in Central time. CME's own trading-hours page did not respond when we tried to read it, so the hours above come from the broker's published summary. No source we read gives the hours in Eastern time. The Eastern figures in this page and its table are our own arithmetic: Eastern time is always one hour ahead of Central, and both zones change their clocks on the same dates, so the one-hour difference holds all year.
Those are the hours of the futures contract. What the contract is, and how its price relates to the spot figure most sites show, is explained on our page on spot vs futures price. The code you will see for it on most quote screens is SI, one of the silver ticker symbols worth knowing.
London's noon auction in Eastern time
The LBMA Silver Price is set by an auction that starts at 12:00 noon London time, once each business day. For most of the year that is 7:00 a.m. in New York, because London and New York are five hours apart whenever both are on standard time or both are on summer time.
The exception comes twice a year. The UK moves its clocks forward on the last Sunday in March and back on the last Sunday in October; in 2026 those dates were 29 March and 25 October. The United States changes its clocks on different Sundays, so for a few weeks in March, and again for a short spell in late October and early November, the two cities are only four hours apart. During those weeks the London auction starts at 8:00 a.m. Eastern. The auction has no fixed finishing time, since it runs in rounds until buying and selling balance.
Shanghai's two sessions in Eastern time
The Shanghai Gold Exchange runs a day session from 9:00 to 15:30 and a night session from 20:00 of the previous day to 2:30 of the current day, so Monday's night session opens on Friday at 20:00. The exchange's hours page does not name a time zone; the times are Beijing time. The IANA time zone database, a secondary source, puts Shanghai at eight hours ahead of UTC, with no daylight saving since 1991.
Converting is simple once you know the offset. Beijing is 13 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time and 12 hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time. In winter, the day session runs from 8:00 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. Eastern on the evening before, and the night session runs from 7:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Eastern. In summer, add one hour to each Eastern figure. So Shanghai's night session covers the New York morning, which is the window when London, New York and Shanghai all trade at once.
The timing also explains how we compare prices across the two countries. Shanghai's morning benchmark is set during the Beijing morning, which falls on the previous evening in New York, so our Shanghai silver price page sets it against the last US close before it, not the same-date close that comes hours later.
Holidays change the hours
Every venue keeps its own holiday calendar. For CME Globex, holidays can bring an early halt or a full closure; a CME broker's blog cites an early halt on Monday holidays and no trading on Good Friday, April 3, 2026, and points traders to CME's official page for current hours. In Shanghai, the exchange holds no night session on the evening before a public holiday. The table above shows a normal week. On a holiday week, check the venue's own notice before relying on any time here.
Why some sites show silver moving on a weekend
From Friday 5:00 p.m. ET to Sunday 6:00 p.m. ET, US futures do not trade, and London's auction does not run. Yet some price pages show a number that changes on Saturday. There are two usual reasons. Some feeds keep publishing indicative quotes from dealers who are still willing to name a price, with little or no trading behind them. Others convert the price into a currency that is still moving, or show a stale figure with a fresh time stamp. Either way, a weekend move is a quote, not a trade. The figure that matters is the first one after the Sunday open, and the jump between Friday's close and that first trade shows up on a candlestick chart as a gap; our guide on how to read a silver price chart shows what that looks like.
When a dealer sets your price
A retail dealer generally fixes your price when you confirm an order, not when you first see a quote. Many stop taking orders, or widen their quotes, while the market they price from is closed, because they cannot hedge until it reopens. The dealer's own terms say when a price is locked and for how long, and those terms are worth reading before you place an order outside market hours. How the futures market's stocks of deliverable bars move from week to week is on our COMEX silver inventory page.
The limits of this timetable
This page can't tell you the hours on a given holiday, because CME's official calendar was unreadable to us and every exchange publishes its own changes. It can't tell you that the times we list are final: the Shanghai rules let the exchange change its benchmark times by announcement, and broker summaries can lag the exchange. And it can't tell you which session is the right one to buy in; it only tells you which ones are open. For the price itself, the latest silver quote and when it was read are on our homepage.
Information, not financial advice. We do not tell you to buy or sell and we do not predict prices. Figures are reference numbers as of the time shown.
Session times matter less for metal held for years in a retirement account than for an order placed tonight. For that longer kind of holding, this site's partner is Augusta Precious Metals, and our page on it lists what the company publishes about itself.
Frequently asked questions
What time does the silver market open on Sunday?
US silver futures open on CME Globex at 5:00 p.m. Central time on Sunday, which is 6:00 p.m. Eastern, according to a broker's published summary of CME's hours. That open starts the trading week, and runs, with a short pause each weekday evening, until Friday at 5:00 p.m. Eastern.
Is the silver market open 24 hours a day?
Close to it on weekdays. CME Globex trades silver futures almost around the clock from Sunday evening to Friday afternoon, with a one-hour pause each day from Monday to Thursday. London sets its benchmark once a day at noon local time, and Shanghai trades in two sessions of its own.
What time is the LBMA silver price set in Eastern time?
The auction starts at noon London time, which is 7:00 a.m. Eastern for most of the year. For a few weeks around the March and autumn clock changes, when the UK and the US change on different dates, it starts at 8:00 a.m. Eastern instead. There is no fixed time for the result.
Sources
Each page we drew a fact from, with whether it was the publisher's own page or a page reporting it.
- help.metrotrade.com (help.metrotrade.com; secondary source; read 2026-11-10)
- cmegroup.com (cmegroup.com; publisher's own page; read 2026-11-10)
- lbma.org.uk (lbma.org.uk; publisher's own page; read 2026-11-10)
- gov.uk (gov.uk; publisher's own page; read 2026-11-10)
- en.sge.com.cn (en.sge.com.cn; publisher's own page; read 2026-11-10)
- data.iana.org (data.iana.org; secondary source; read 2026-11-10)
- blog.crosstrade.io (blog.crosstrade.io; secondary source; read 2026-11-10)
- lbma.org.uk (lbma.org.uk; publisher's own page; read 2026-11-10)
- lbma.org.uk (lbma.org.uk; secondary source; read 2026-11-10)