Futures Trading Hours
Futures trade nearly around the clock: the market opens Sunday at 5:00pm CT and runs to Friday at 4:00pm CT, with one 4:00 to 5:00pm CT break each day. That one sentence answers most hours questions, and the rest of this page covers the ones it does not: the Sunday open, the daily halt, this year's holiday calendar, and why the session clock matters more in a funded account than a personal one.
The Weekly Session at a Glance
Every futures contract on this site trades the same CME Globex session, all times US Central.
| Day | Session |
|---|---|
| Sunday | Opens 5:00pm CT for Monday's trade date |
| Monday | Open, with the daily 4:00-5:00pm CT halt |
| Tuesday | Open, with the daily 4:00-5:00pm CT halt |
| Wednesday | Open, with the daily 4:00-5:00pm CT halt |
| Thursday | Open, with the daily 4:00-5:00pm CT halt |
| Friday | Closes 4:00pm CT for the week |
| Saturday | Closed |
What Time Do Futures Open on Sunday?
Futures open Sunday at 5:00pm CT, which is 6:00pm ET. That Sunday evening session is not a separate market: it is the start of Monday's trade date. A trade you put on Sunday night settles as a Monday trade, and any gap between Friday's close and the Sunday open shows up the moment trading resumes. Weekend news gets priced in one jump at 5:00pm CT, not gradually.
The Daily Halt
From 4:00 to 5:00pm CT each weekday the market pauses for maintenance. This is also where one trade date ends and the next begins: the close at 4:00 CT ends the day, and the 5:00pm CT reopen starts a new one. Day orders are cleared at the close, and platforms roll their session numbers across the break. If your platform shows a different daily profit figure at 5:01pm than it did at 3:59pm, this boundary is why.
Futures Hours in Your Time Zone
| Central (CT) | Eastern (ET) | Pacific (PT) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sunday Open | 5:00pm | 6:00pm | 3:00pm |
| Daily Halt | 4:00-5:00pm | 5:00-6:00pm | 2:00-3:00pm |
| Friday Close | 4:00pm | 5:00pm | 2:00pm |
CME publishes everything in US Central Time, and all three US zones shift together on daylight saving, so this table is right year round. For readers outside the US: Central Time is UTC-5 during US daylight saving (roughly March to November) and UTC-6 the rest of the year, so the Sunday open is 10:00pm or 11:00pm UTC depending on the season.
Day Session vs Overnight Session
Inside that long Globex session, traders talk about two windows. The day session, often called regular trading hours or RTH, is roughly 8:30am to 3:00pm CT for stock index futures, matching the hours the US stock market is open. Everything else is the overnight session. The exchange makes no such split: it is one continuous session, and every hour of it is fully tradeable. But volume concentrates heavily in the day session, spreads are usually tighter there, and many data feeds and volume profiles are built on RTH-only data. If a trading plan or a prop firm rule mentions RTH, this window is what it means.
Futures Market Holidays 2026
Holiday closure dates are set for the year, but CME finalizes the exact early-halt times only about two weeks before each holiday. So this table tells you whether a day is a full closure or a modified session, and for the exact halt times on a modified day, check the CME schedule linked below in the week before the holiday.
| Date | Holiday | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| January 1, 2026 | New Year's Day | Closed | Reopens that evening at the regular 5:00pm CT open for the January 2 trade date. |
| January 19, 2026 | Martin Luther King Jr. Day | Modified hours | Monday holiday pattern: early halt, then the regular 5:00pm CT evening reopen for the Tuesday trade date. |
| February 16, 2026 | Presidents Day | Modified hours | Monday holiday pattern: early halt, then the regular 5:00pm CT evening reopen for the Tuesday trade date. |
| April 3, 2026 | Good Friday | Closed | Equity index products ran a short morning session for the jobs report before closing. CME publishes the exact Good Friday schedule each year. |
| May 25, 2026 | Memorial Day | Modified hours | Monday holiday pattern: early halt, then the regular 5:00pm CT evening reopen for the Tuesday trade date. |
| June 19, 2026 | Juneteenth | Modified hours | Friday holiday with an early halt. CME finalizes the exact time about two weeks out. |
| July 3, 2026 | Independence Day (observed) | Modified hours | Friday holiday with an early halt. CME finalizes the exact time about two weeks out. |
| September 7, 2026 | Labor Day | Modified hours | Monday holiday pattern: early halt, then the regular 5:00pm CT evening reopen for the Tuesday trade date. |
| November 26, 2026 | Thanksgiving | Modified hours | Early halt Thursday, then the regular evening reopen for the Friday trade date. |
| November 27, 2026 | Day After Thanksgiving | Modified hours | Shortened Friday session with early closes across product groups. |
| December 24, 2026 | Christmas Eve | Modified hours | Early closes ahead of the Christmas closure. |
| December 25, 2026 | Christmas Day | Closed | Reopens Sunday December 27 at the regular 5:00pm CT open. |
| January 1, 2027 | New Year's Day | Closed | Reopens Sunday January 3 at the regular 5:00pm CT open. |
The pattern worth memorizing: on most Monday holidays the market trades a shortened session, halts around midday, and reopens at the regular 5:00pm CT open that same evening for Tuesday's trade date. Full closures are rarer: Good Friday, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. Source: the official CME holiday and trading hours schedule, verified August 17, 2026.
Contracts These Hours Cover
All 20 futures contracts in our spec reference trade this same session. The count and the claim are both checked against the contract data at build time, so this list can never quietly drift.
Equity Index
FX
- 6E Euro FX
What Session Hours Mean for a Funded Account
On a personal account the session clock is trivia. On a funded account it is rule mechanics, because most futures prop firms define your trading day as the exchange's trade date: the session that opens at 5:00pm CT and closes at 4:00pm CT the next afternoon.
Three places that shows up. First, end-of-day trailing drawdowns update at the session close, so where your floor lands for tomorrow is decided at 4:00pm CT, not at midnight. Second, daily loss limits typically reset when the new trade date opens at 5:00pm CT, which means a Sunday evening trade is already spending Monday's limit. Third, the Sunday open is where weekend gaps meet a trailing drawdown: a position or an early entry into a gap moves your account's high or low water mark before most of the world is even awake.
The mechanics behind those rules live in our guides on how trailing drawdown works and how consistency rules are measured, and each firm's review page states which definitions that firm uses.
More Tools
Contract specs for these 20 markets live in our contract specs and tick values table. To size a trade against your account's drawdown, use the position size calculator, or browse everything on the tools hub.
Futures Hours Questions
What time do futures open on Sunday?
Futures open Sunday at 5:00pm US Central Time, 6:00pm Eastern. The Sunday session is the start of Monday's trade date, so weekend news is priced in at that open.
Are futures markets open on holidays?
Usually partially. Most US holidays are modified sessions with an early halt rather than full closures. The full closures are Good Friday, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. Exact halt times are finalized by CME about two weeks before each holiday.
Why do futures stop trading from 4:00 to 5:00pm CT?
That hour is the daily maintenance break, and it is also the boundary between trade dates. The 4:00pm close ends one trading day and the 5:00pm reopen starts the next, which is when day orders clear and most prop firm daily limits reset.
Do futures trade 24 hours a day?
Close to it, but not quite. The market runs from Sunday 5:00pm CT to Friday 4:00pm CT with a one-hour break each day, which is about 23 hours a day, five days a week. It is closed Friday afternoon through Sunday afternoon.