Python calendar.timegm() Function

The Python calendar.timegm() function is used to convert a time tuple in UTC to a timestamp (seconds since epoch).

This function is the inverse of time.gmtime(), which converts a timestamp to a time tuple.

Syntax

Following is the syntax of the Python calendar.timegm() function

timestamp = calendar.timegm(time_tuple)

Parameters

This function accepts a tuple of 9 elements as a parameter representing a UTC time (year, month, day, hour, minute, second, weekday, day of the year, DST flag).

Return Value

This function returns an integer representing the corresponding timestamp.

Example: Converting UTC Time Tuple to Timestamp

In this example, we convert a specific UTC time tuple to a timestamp using the calendar.timegm() function

import calendar

time_tuple = (2025, 3, 14, 12, 30, 0, 4, 73, 0)  # March 14, 2025, 12:30:00 UTC

timestamp = calendar.timegm(time_tuple)
print("Timestamp:", timestamp)

Following is the output of the above code

Timestamp: 1741955400

Example: Converting Current UTC Time to Timestamp

We can use the time.gmtime() function to get the current UTC time tuple and convert it

import calendar
import time

# Get current UTC time tuple
time_tuple = time.gmtime()

timestamp = calendar.timegm(time_tuple)
print("Current UTC Timestamp:", timestamp)

Following is the output obtained

Current UTC Timestamp: 1741955400  # (Example output, varies based on current time)

Example: Converting a Past Date to Timestamp

We can also convert past dates to timestamps as shown in the example below

import calendar

time_tuple = (2000, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 5, 1, 0)  # January 1, 2000, 00:00:00 UTC

timestamp = calendar.timegm(time_tuple)
print("Timestamp for Y2K:", timestamp)

We get the output as shown below

Timestamp for Y2K: 946684800

Example: Converting a Future Date to Timestamp

We can convert a future date, such as January 1, 2050, to a timestamp as shown in the following example

import calendar

time_tuple = (2050, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 5, 1, 0)  # January 1, 2050, 00:00:00 UTC

timestamp = calendar.timegm(time_tuple)
print("Timestamp for 2050:", timestamp)

The result produced is as shown below

Timestamp for 2050: 2524608000