 <p>it print GMT+02 because this is your "local" timezone. if you want to print the date without timezone information, use SimpleDateFormat to format the date to you liking.</p> <p>edit : adding the code example (with your variable 'myDate')</p> <pre><code>SimpleDateFormat inputSDF = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss"); inputSDF.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC")); Date myDate = inputSDF.parse("2016-09-25 17:26:12"); // SimpleDateFormat outputSDF = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss"); System.out.println(outputSDF.format(myDate)); System.out.println(TimeZone.getDefault().getID()); </code></pre> <p>yield on the (my) console (with my local timezone).</p> <pre><code>2016-09-25 19:26:12 Europe/Paris </code></pre>