diff --git a/esphome/components/logger/logger_host.cpp b/esphome/components/logger/logger_host.cpp
index 6222df34f88..060e8561e73 100644
--- a/esphome/components/logger/logger_host.cpp
+++ b/esphome/components/logger/logger_host.cpp
@@ -1,8 +1,5 @@
 #if defined(USE_HOST)
 #include "logger.h"
-#ifdef USE_TIME_TIMEZONE
-#include "esphome/components/time/posix_tz.h"
-#endif
 
 namespace esphome::logger {
 
@@ -14,11 +11,7 @@ void HOT Logger::write_msg_(const char *msg, size_t len) {
   time_t rawtime;
   ::time(&rawtime);
   struct tm timeinfo;
-#ifdef USE_TIME_TIMEZONE
-  time::epoch_to_local_tm(rawtime, time::get_global_tz(), &timeinfo);
-#else
-  localtime_r(&rawtime, &timeinfo);  // Thread-safe version
-#endif
+  localtime_r(&rawtime, &timeinfo);  // TZ env var set by time component
   size_t pos = strftime(buffer, TIMESTAMP_LEN + 1, "[%H:%M:%S]", &timeinfo);
 
   // Copy message (with newline already included by caller)
diff --git a/esphome/components/time/real_time_clock.cpp b/esphome/components/time/real_time_clock.cpp
index 4aa8e3fd716..f518b359515 100644
--- a/esphome/components/time/real_time_clock.cpp
+++ b/esphome/components/time/real_time_clock.cpp
@@ -104,6 +104,12 @@ void RealTimeClock::apply_timezone_(const char *tz) {
     return;
   }
 
+#ifdef USE_HOST
+  // On host platform, also set TZ environment variable for libc compatibility
+  setenv("TZ", tz, 1);
+  tzset();
+#endif
+
   // Parse the POSIX TZ string using our custom parser
   if (!parse_posix_tz(tz, parsed)) {
     ESP_LOGW(TAG, "Failed to parse timezone: %s", tz);