you can use You can use the getAvailableIDs method to iterate through all the supported time zone IDs. You can then choose a supported ID to get a TimeZone. If the time zone you want is not represented by one of the supported IDs, then a custom time zone ID can be specified to produce a TimeZone. The syntax of a custom time zone ID is: CustomID: GMT Sign Hours : Minutes GMT Sign Hours Minutes GMT Sign Hours Sign: one of + - Hours: Digit Digit Digit Minutes: Digit Digit Digit: one of 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Hours must be between 0 to 23 and Minutes must be between 00 to 59. For example, "GMT+10" and "GMT+0010" mean ten hours and ten minutes ahead of GMT, respectively. read more here http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/util/TimeZone.html