Post date time not updating after Timezone change

[nazmulhudadev]

Please create a post first and check the date time from Dashboard post list view. Assume, it's 1:30pm.
Now, change the Timezone from the settings and check the previous post date time again and you will see the time is not updated.

I would expect that the published date would reflect the timezone change

[welcher]

Date in post list view that is not updating after the timezone change

[welcher]

Created at WCAsia 2023 contributor day

[welcher]

Possibly related #52501

[hztyfoon]

timezone changing doesn't apply for older posts

[hztyfoon]

I've also checked it from WCAsia 2023 contributor day & also found it on my end.

In the screenshot I shared:
the 2 posts was created within 2 minutes but before publishing the 2nd post the timezone was changed from 'UTC' to 'utc+7' but only the 2nd post's timezone changed but not the posts published before that.

I think all the post should be changed/converted to the new timezone.

Trac ticket: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/57742

When we change GMT & click on save changes then all the post Date updated automatically based on the currently selected Timezone.

Trac ticket: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/57742

[sakibmd]

I have also checked @nazmulhudadev's PR and it's working great.

[hasanmisbah]

I've tested @sakibmd's patch and @nazmulhudadev's PR both are working fine. thanks for your contribution.

[welcher]

This is great! The code looks fine to me. I took a brief look and didn't see any unit tests for the column_date function - do we need to add them?

Maybe one of the core committers who attended contributor day would be open to reviewing it as well? @adamsilverstein @desrosj @mikeschroder

[vimalroy08]

I can confirm this issue still exists in the latest WordPress version (6.8.3 as of November 2025).
When changing the timezone from Settings → General, previously published posts do not have their displayed post_date updated accordingly — only newly published posts reflect the new timezone.

This can create confusion for editors working across regions, visitors reading the articles, and even affect the accuracy of event or incident timestamps — since the post list, REST API responses, and theme functions like the_time() or get_the_date() still reflect the old offset until each post is manually updated.

I’ve also tested this on a clean install with no plugins and default theme (Twenty Twenty-Five), and the behavior is consistent.

It seems the proposed patches from @nazmulhudadev and @sakibmd are still relevant and fix the issue. Can we please get a review or update on whether this can be merged into core?

Environment tested:

WordPress : 6.8.3
Web server : Apache (also on nginx/1.26.1)
PHP version : 8.3.24 (Supports 64bit values) (also on 8.2.27 (Supports 64bit values))
PHP SAPI : litespeed
Database Extension : mysqli
Server version : 10.11.14-MariaDB (also in 8.0.35)
Client version : mysqlnd 8.3.24 (also in mysqlnd 8.2.27)

Tested changing from UTC+4 (Dubai) to EDT (UTC-4)