How can I get the current date and time in UTC or GMT in Java?

java.util.Date has no specific time zone, although its value is most commonly thought of in relation to UTC. What makes you think it's in local time?

To be precise: the value within a java.util.Date is the number of milliseconds since the Unix epoch, which occurred at midnight January 1st 1970, UTC. The same epoch could also be described in other time zones, but the traditional description is in terms of UTC. As it's a number of milliseconds since a fixed epoch, the value within java.util.Date is the same around the world at any particular instant, regardless of local time zone.

I suspect the problem is that you're displaying it via an instance of Calendar which uses the local timezone, or possibly using Date.toString() which also uses the local timezone, or a SimpleDateFormat instance, which, by default, also uses local timezone.

If this isn't the problem, please post some sample code.

I would, however, recommend that you use Joda-Time anyway, which offers a much clearer API.

    Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance();
    System.out.println("current: "+c.getTime());

    TimeZone z = c.getTimeZone();
    int offset = z.getRawOffset();
    if(z.inDaylightTime(new Date())){
        offset = offset + z.getDSTSavings();
    }
    int offsetHrs = offset / 1000 / 60 / 60;
    int offsetMins = offset / 1000 / 60 % 60;

    System.out.println("offset: " + offsetHrs);
    System.out.println("offset: " + offsetMins);

    c.add(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY, (-offsetHrs));
    c.add(Calendar.MINUTE, (-offsetMins));

    System.out.println("GMT Time: "+c.getTime());

You can use:

Calendar aGMTCalendar = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT"));

Then all operations performed using the aGMTCalendar object will be done with the GMT time zone and will not have the daylight savings time or fixed offsets applied. I think the previous poster is correct that the Date() object always returns a GMT it's not until you go to do something with the date object that it gets converted to the local time zone.

SimpleDateFormat dateFormatGmt = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd");
dateFormatGmt.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT"));
System.out.println(dateFormatGmt.format(date));

With:

Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();

Then cal have the current date and time.
You also could get the current Date and Time for timezone with:

Calendar cal2 = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT-2"));

You could ask cal.get(Calendar.DATE); or other Calendar constant about others details.
Date and Timestamp are deprecated in Java. Calendar class it isn't.

public static void main(String args[]){
    LocalDate date=LocalDate.now();  
    System.out.println("Current date = "+date);
}

The Simple Function that you can use:

Edit: this version uses the modern java.time classes.

private static final DateTimeFormatter FORMATTER
        = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("dd-MM-uuuu HH:mm:ss z");

public static String getUtcDateTime() {
    return ZonedDateTime.now(ZoneId.of("Etc/UTC")).format(FORMATTER);
}

Return value from the method:

26-03-2022 17:38:55 UTC

Original function:

 public String getUTC_DateTime() {
    SimpleDateFormat dateTimeFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MM-yyyy HH:mm:ss z");
    dateTimeFormat.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));//gmt
    return dateTimeFormat.format(new Date());

}

return of above function:

26-03-2022 08:07:21 UTC 

public class CurrentUtcDate 
{
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Date date = new Date();
        SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MM-yyyy HH:mm:ss");
        dateFormat.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));
        System.out.println("UTC Time is: " + dateFormat.format(date));
    }
}

Output:

UTC Time is: 22-01-2018 13:14:35

You can change the date format as needed.

Current date in the UTC

Instant.now().toString().replaceAll("T.*", "");

This is the way I do it when I need to output a Date object, which is usually the case when you need to save a Date in an SQL database and I want it to be in UTC. I just subtract the offset time of the local time zone.

    ZonedDateTime now = ZonedDateTime.now();
    Date nowUTC = new Date(1000 * (now.toEpochSecond() - now.getOffset().getTotalSeconds()));

--UPDATE Basil's suggestion for a cleaner way to have the same result would be

    Date nowUTC = Date.from(ZonedDateTime.now().toInstant());

BUT after testing this in a non-UTC java system env, I saw that the results are not the same. With Basil's code, the Date is still on local zone

Use java.time package and include below code-

ZonedDateTime now = ZonedDateTime.now( ZoneOffset.UTC );

or

LocalDateTime now2 = LocalDateTime.now( ZoneOffset.UTC );

depending on your application need.