--- title: "Best Time to Send a Press Release Globally, Seoul to New York" description: "No single hour is morning in Seoul and New York. Pick an anchor market, set the lift for its morning, and relay the news across APAC, MENA, Europe and the US." author: "Shilika Jain" date: "2026-10-28T01:41:50.255+00:00" tags: ["embargo strategy", "apac pr", "crypto pr", "media relations", "launch pr"] canonical: "https://www.shilikajain.com/blog/global-announcement-timing-across-apac-time-zones" --- # Best Time to Send a Press Release Globally, Seoul to New York By [Shilika Jain](https://www.shilikajain.com/authors/shilika-jain) - 10/28/2026 No single hour is morning in Seoul and New York. Pick an anchor market, set the lift for its morning, and relay the news across APAC, MENA, Europe and the US. --- # Best Time to Send a Press Release Globally, Seoul to New York There's no single best time to send a press release globally, because 8am in New York is 9pm or 10pm in Seoul, depending on the season. Choose one anchor market where the news matters most, lift the embargo on that market's morning, and brief every other market in advance under the same embargo so their reporters wake up to it, or give them a localised second wave on their own morning. Who gets the news first should follow the order of who has to act on it, not the order of who is easiest to email. I've lost count of the launch plans I've seen with "embargo lifts 9am ET" typed in and no other time zone considered. That works for a US story. For a global one, it means your Asian coverage lands overnight and your Asian community hears the news from a screenshot. ## Why is one global send time a trap? Most of the markets I work across don't move their clocks. Seoul and Tokyo sit at UTC+9, Singapore at UTC+8, Mumbai at UTC+5:30 and Dubai at UTC+4 all year. London and New York shift for daylight saving, and not on the same dates, so for a couple of weeks each spring and autumn the London to New York gap shrinks from five hours to four. A plan built in July can be an hour off by November. The bigger issue is simple geometry. This is what the same lift moment looks like across seven cities on winter clocks: | Lift time (UTC) | Seoul / Tokyo | Singapore | Mumbai | Dubai | London | New York | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 22:00 | 07:00 next day | 06:00 next day | 03:30 next day | 02:00 next day | 22:00 | 17:00 | | 00:00 | 09:00 | 08:00 | 05:30 | 04:00 | 00:00 | 19:00 previous day | | 03:30 | 12:30 | 11:30 | 09:00 | 07:30 | 03:30 | 22:30 previous day | | 08:00 | 17:00 | 16:00 | 13:30 | 12:00 | 08:00 | 03:00 | | 13:00 | 22:00 | 21:00 | 18:30 | 17:00 | 13:00 | 08:00 | In summer, add an hour to the London and New York columns. Every row is a working morning somewhere and the middle of the night somewhere else. You're not finding the perfect hour. You're choosing who gets the good one. ## How do you choose the anchor market? The anchor is the market where the announcement changes the most for the reader. I decide it with four questions in this order, and the first clear answer wins: 1. **Where is the money or the partner?** A raise led by US funds or a partnership with a US company usually anchors on New York. A Korean exchange relationship anchors on Seoul. 2. **Where are the users who'll act?** If the news asks people to do something, like claim, bridge, sign up or trade, anchor where most of them are. 3. **Where is the exclusive?** If one outlet has the exclusive, its home morning is your lift time, and everyone else's plan works backwards from it. 4. **Where is the event?** Launches timed to Token2049 or Korea Blockchain Week anchor on that city. Once the anchor is set, every other market gets one of two treatments: **same moment** (embargoed in advance, they publish at the anchor's lift even if it's their evening) or **next local morning** (a second wave with a local angle). Crypto media is online around the clock, so same moment works better than many founders expect for crypto-native desks. Mainstream business desks are more likely to want their own morning. The 22:00 UTC row is worth knowing. It's early morning in Seoul and Tokyo and late afternoon in New York, which is the closest the calendar gets to a slot both ends can live with. It isn't perfect for either, and London is asleep, but for a story with equal weight in Korea and the US it's often the least bad choice. ## The relay sequence: who gets the news first, and why I think of a global announcement as a relay rather than a starting gun. The order follows who has to act, approve or prepare. | Order | Who | When (relative to lift) | Why they come here | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | Partners, lead investors, exchanges named in the news | 1 to 2 weeks before | They approve their mentions and need time to prepare their own posts | | 2 | The exclusive outlet, if there is one | 5 to 7 days before | Interviews and reporting take time | | 3 | Embargoed tier-1 outlets in the anchor market | 3 to 5 days before | Enough time to write a real story, not enough for it to leak far | | 4 | Embargoed local-language outlets in other markets | 2 to 3 days before | Localised copy, local spokesperson lined up | | 5 | Internal team, moderators, community leads | 24 hours before | They'll field the questions, so they need the approved answers first | | 6 | Community channels in every language | At lift, within minutes | Users shouldn't learn about it from a journalist's tweet | | 7 | Second-wave markets | Their next local morning | A fresh local angle so the story isn't stale | | 8 | Wire distribution, if used at all | After the earned coverage is live | It adds search footprint; it shouldn't compete with your exclusive | The day-count ranges here are working norms rather than rules. What matters is that each group gets the news in a predictable order and that nobody further down the list can scoop anybody above them. My short version of the run-up, from a post in 2024: > wanna activate PR for a major launch/announcement? here's a quick strategy: > > - Create active thought leadership 1-2 month before the launch > - Secure 1-2 podcasts/interviews 1 month before the launch > -AMA - 15 days before the launch > - Embargo press outreach: week before the launch > > [Shilika Jain on X, 11 Oct 2024](https://x.com/Shilika_jain/status/1844810665459884246) The relay table is the last week of that plan, stretched across seven time zones. If you want the detail on how many outlets to hold under one embargo, I've written that up in [managing a token launch embargo across multiple outlets](/blog/token-launch-embargo-management-multiple-outlets). ## A worked example: an APAC-anchored raise with a US lead investor Say a protocol is announcing a raise led by a US fund, with a new Korean exchange partner and most of its users in Korea and Southeast Asia. The anchor is Seoul, because that's where readers will act. - **Lift:** 00:00 UTC, which is 09:00 in Seoul and Tokyo and 08:00 in Singapore. - **Same moment:** Korean crypto outlets, Singapore and Southeast Asian crypto desks, and US crypto-native outlets that agreed to publish at the lift, even though it's 7pm in New York. - **Next local morning:** Indian business press at 09:00 IST, three and a half hours after the lift, with an India-specific angle (developer hiring, Indian users), and a US business outlet that prefers its own morning, at 13:00 UTC. - **Community:** Korean, English and Vietnamese channels post at 00:00 UTC exactly, with pinned FAQs approved the day before. - **Founder availability:** live in Seoul hours on day one, then on New York hours the evening after for US calls. Each same-moment market gets its own [localised version of the release](/blog/translation-vs-localisation-crypto-press-release), not a translation of the US copy. The US lead investor posts its own announcement at the US morning. That's fine. It reads as the investor's view of news the region already knows, not as the first word. ## The overnight shift nobody plans for The part of a global launch that founders underestimate is the 24 hours after lift. Reporters in one market send follow-ups while the people who can answer them are asleep. Community questions pile up in a language nobody on shift reads. I wrote this in 2023 and nothing about the job has changed: > love my job although it's a mental stretch to learn about complex web3 tech,send 100s of emails,follow up w clients at 2AM in the night,break my head in devising new strategies,feeling blank due to too much information overload > > [Shilika Jain on X, 30 May 2023](https://x.com/Shilika_jain/status/1663583101799510016) For a global lift, split the first 24 hours into shifts and put names next to them. One person covers APAC press, one covers US and European press, and the community moderators in each language know who to escalate to at any hour. If your team can't staff that, it's a sign to anchor on one region and keep the rest for a second wave. ## When a staggered relay is the wrong call A relay has costs, and sometimes one simultaneous lift is better: - **Market-moving news.** If the announcement could move a token price, a staggered rollout gives some readers the news before others. Keep it simultaneous everywhere. - **Leak risk.** Crypto news crosses time zones on X and Telegram in minutes. A second-wave market whose story is already circulating needs a genuinely new angle, or it isn't a second wave at all. - **Holidays.** No sequence survives Lunar New Year or Chuseok landing in launch week. Check the [APAC press windows calendar](/playbook/apac-press-windows-2026) before you lock a date. - **Small teams.** A relay needs people awake across time zones. If that's one founder, choose one anchor and accept the trade-off. If you want someone to build the sequence with you, timing across Korea, Japan, India, Singapore and Dubai is part of my [APAC PR service](/services/apac-pr). ## FAQ ### What day of the week is best for a global press release? Tuesday to Thursday in the anchor market is the safe default, because reporters are working and the news cycle isn't winding down. Avoid lifting on a Friday in the US if the anchor is New York, since it's already Friday night across most of Asia and the story drifts into the weekend. ### Should Asian outlets publish at the same moment as US outlets? For crypto-native outlets, often yes, because they publish around the clock and want to break the news, not follow it. For mainstream business outlets it's usually better to give them their own local morning with a localised angle. ### How do I write the embargo time so nobody gets it wrong? Write it in UTC first, then in the reporter's local time, for example "00:00 UTC / 09:00 KST, Tuesday". Put it in the subject line and the first line of the release. Don't write it only in your own time zone. ### Does daylight saving really change the plan? Yes, for London and New York. Asian and Gulf markets keep the same offset all year, so a plan built in summer can shift the US and UK slots by an hour in winter. Recheck the table whenever your launch date crosses March or late October to early November. *Planning a launch that has to land in Seoul, Singapore and New York in one day? [Send me the date and the markets](/contact), and I'll sketch the relay with you.* --- **Book a 30-min launch timing review with Shilika** - https://calendly.com/shilikajain/30min/ Canonical: https://www.shilikajain.com/blog/global-announcement-timing-across-apac-time-zones