France has territory in the greatest number of time zones, spanning 12 standard time zones worldwide.
This total is possible because France includes overseas regions and collectivities scattered across the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, as well as metropolitan France in Europe. French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Réunion, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and other territories each occupy geographic areas with different local times.
Russia is often given as the answer because it stretches across 11 time zones in one continuous landmass. The United States also covers many zones when its states and territories are counted, but France has the highest overall total under the usual country comparison.
France can temporarily be associated with 13 local times when daylight-saving changes are included in the calculation. Time zones are political and practical divisions rather than perfectly straight geographic bands, so totals can differ slightly depending on whether standard time, daylight time, or overseas dependencies are counted.