How to Update Regional Settings for Windows 11

Prerequisites

Before you begin, sign in with an administrator account. Changing your own region and formats works from a standard account. The system locale and the Copy settings option, both covered later, need administrator rights and will ask for approval.

Also make sure Windows is fully updated. Switching region or language can make Windows download extra components, and a half-installed update can cause errors. Go to Settings › Windows Update, click Check for updates, install anything pending and restart if asked.

How to update your Region in 🪟 Windows 11

The quickest route to the regional settings is Settings › Time & language › Language & region. There you choose your country, and then the format Windows uses for dates, times and currency. The steps are the same on Home and Pro.

1. Press the Win+I to open the Settings app ⚙️. You should see the Settings ⚙️ window with a list of categories on the left.

2. In the menu on the left, click Time & language.
3. On the right side of the screen, click Language & region. The language and region options for your PC appear.

4. Find the Region section. Click the dropdown menu next to Country or region and pick your current location from the list. The change applies straight away, and you do not need to click Save.

Windows 11 suggests a regional format that matches the country you picked. You can change it using the Regional format dropdown just below. The list shows the formats available for that country, so you can choose something other than the default. For example, you can live in one country and keep the date style of another.

If you want finer control, expand the Regional format section. There you can adjust the calendar, the first day of the week, and the date and time formats. This is where you switch between a 12-hour and a 24-hour clock. Changing the region does not change the Windows display language. That is set separately, in the same Language & region page.

To undo any of this, return to the same page and pick your original country or format again.

Advanced Administrative Language Settings

The settings above apply only to your own account. To carry your formats over to the sign-in screen and to every new user account, use the older Control Panel region window. You need an administrator account for this.

1. Open Control Panel 🎛️ (search for it in the Start menu ⊞) and go to Clock and Region. If you do not see that category, set View by to Category in the top-right corner.
2. Click Region, then select the Administrative tab. Make sure your formats are set the way you want first, because Windows copies what your account currently uses.
3. Click Copy settings… and confirm the User Account Control prompt if one appears. A window opens with check boxes for the Welcome screen and system accounts, and for new user accounts.
4. Tick the box or boxes you want, then click OK to apply your current regional format to the Welcome screen and new user accounts.

Existing user accounts are not changed by this. Each of those users must set their own region in Settings.

The same Administrative tab has a Change system locale… button. Click it and select your preferred language from the dropdown. The system locale controls how older programs display characters that are not part of the standard Unicode set. If an older program shows garbled text, this is the setting to check. Windows usually asks you to restart your computer for the change to take effect. The change itself is often completed within 60 seconds. Save your work before you restart. To undo it, set the previous locale again and restart a second time.

Troubleshooting Setup Errors

If you get errors when you change your region, check your internet connection first. Windows may need to download a language pack, and the download fails if you are offline. Also make sure your firewall or proxy is not blocking access to Microsoft servers. Then run Windows Update again and retry the change.

If the options are greyed out, your IT department may manage them through Group Policy. This happens most often on a work or school PC. Ask your administrator to change the setting or to give you an exception. Home editions do not have Group Policy, so on Home a greyed-out option usually points to a work account or management software on the device.

Enterprise and IT Management

IT administrators can manage regional settings across many computers with PowerShell. The LanguagePackManagement module can be used to deploy settings. Registry paths, such as HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Nls\Language, can also be modified through scripts to enforce standards across multiple devices.

Before you push changes to every machine, test them on one PC. Back up the registry first, and run any script from an elevated PowerShell window. Most regional changes only show up after the user signs out and back in, or after a restart.

Summary

Updating your region in Windows 11 makes sure your computer's date, time and currency formats are correct for your location. For most people, the Language & region page in Settings is all that is needed. Use the Control Panel options only when you also want to change the sign-in screen, new accounts or the system locale.