# TODAY

**The function TODAY returns a Date corresponding with the date the function was called.**

This function requires no input. It returns a [Date](../../variable-data-types/the-date-variable-data-type) indicating the date at the time the function was called. By default, the date will be in the UTC timezone, though TODAY also accepts an optional input [string](../../variable-data-types/the-text-variable-data-type) specifying the timezone of the output; if this is provided, TODAY will return the date in the specified timezone.

#### Declaration

```javascript
TODAY(time_zone) -> today
```

#### Parameters

**time\_zone** (optional, type: _string_, default: UTC) A string representation of the timezone. [TZ Database Names](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones) are the timezone representations TODAY is able to parse.

#### Return Values

**today** (type: _Date_) The present date.

#### Examples

Due to the very nature of the TODAY function, it will return different output depending on when it is called. For the sake of demonstration, **imagine all of the following examples were executed at 10:30 PM (or 22:30 in military time) UTC on April 20, 2021.**

The following example returns the date in UTC. Note that no input is given to the TODAY function; UTC is the default timezone:

```javascript
TODAY() -> {  
 "day": 20,  
 "month": 4,  
 "year": 2021,  
}
```

The Antarctica/Syowa timezone is three hours ahead of UTC. At 10:30 PM UTC, it is already early morning in the Antarctica/Syowa timezone. The following example requests the date in the Antarctica/Syowa timezone. Note that it outputs a Date a day ahead of the previous example, even though, according to our hypothetical, both functions were called at the exact same time:

```javascript
TODAY("Antarctica/Syowa") -> {  
 "day": 21,  
 "month": 4,  
 "year": 2021,  
}
```
