The T is just a literal to separate the date from the time, and the Z means "zero hour offset" also known as "Zulu time" (UTC). If your strings always have a "Z" you can use: SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat( "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss. SSS'Z'", Locale.US); format. setTimeZone(TimeZone.07-Dec-2011