Daylight Saving Time 2026: Clock Change Dates by Country

Clock change dates for 2026

"Forward" is the start of daylight saving time or summer time: an hour of the night is skipped. "Back" is the end: an hour is repeated. The times are on the local clock as it reads just before the change. In the southern hemisphere summer runs across New Year, so the clocks go back in April and forward in September or October.

Each US zone changes at 2:00 AM on its own clock, so the switch runs across the country hour by hour: New York at 07:00 UTC on March 8, Los Angeles three hours later. Europe does it the other way. The UK and every EU country change at the same moment, 01:00 UTC, which is why the local times in the table step from 1:00 to 2:00 to 3:00 AM. In the US, summer time lasts 238 days in 2026; in Europe, 210.

To check a date in any city, the time zone converter reads the same time zone data for any day you pick. It uses the copy in your browser, so if your browser has not been updated since a government changed its rules, the converter shows the old rules too.

United States: the federal rule

Daylight saving time in the US is set by 15 U.S.C. 260a. It starts at 2:00 AM on the second Sunday of March and ends at 2:00 AM on the first Sunday of November. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 moved it to those dates from the first Sunday of April and the last Sunday of October, starting in 2007. A state that lies entirely in one time zone may exempt itself by law, and a state split across zones can exempt the whole state or one part.

NIST lists the places that use that exemption: Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands and Arizona, where the Navajo Indian Reservation is the exception and does change its clocks. So Phoenix keeps UTC−7 all year and shows the same time as Los Angeles from March 8 to October 31.

Congress is debating a permanent change. On July 14, 2026, the House passed H.R. 139, the Sunshine Protection Act of 2025, by 308 votes to 117. The bill would repeal the seasonal period in 260a and move standard time an hour ahead, which makes summer time permanent. The latest action on Congress.gov is its referral to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on July 15, 2026. Until both chambers pass a bill and the President signs it, the clocks keep changing.

Canada: three provinces stop in 2026

In Canada each province and territory sets its own time. The National Research Council's table uses the same days as the US, at 2:00 AM local time, for Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, among others, and notes that most of Saskatchewan stays on Central Standard Time all year and that Yukon keeps UTC−7. The NRC also warns that parts of its page stop being accurate on November 1, 2026, because three provinces leave the system:

• British Columbia announced on March 2, 2026, that the March 8 spring forward was the final time change. On November 1 the clocks stay put, and BC keeps UTC−7 under the name Pacific time. Northeastern BC already used UTC−7 all year, and the East Kootenay region keeps following Alberta.
• Alberta has adopted permanent Alberta Time, UTC−6, and its clocks no longer reset to Mountain Standard Time beginning in November 2026.
• Manitoba announced on September 17, 2026, that its clocks will not revert to standard time on November 1.

The IANA time zone database, which phones and computers use to set their clocks, added these changes in its releases 2026b to 2026e, along with the Northwest Territories, which also stays on year-round time. Devices without those updates may fall back an hour in those provinces on November 1.

European Union and United Kingdom

Directive 2000/84/EC fixes one timetable for every member state: summer time begins at 1:00 AM Greenwich Mean Time on the last Sunday in March and ends at 1:00 AM GMT on the last Sunday in October. It does not apply to the member states' overseas territories. The UK still uses the same rule in its own law: the Summer Time Act 1972, as amended by the Summer Time Order 2002, runs British Summer Time from one o'clock GMT in the morning of the last Sunday in March to one o'clock GMT on the last Sunday in October. GOV.UK gives the 2026 dates as March 29 and October 25.

The European Commission proposed ending the seasonal changes in September 2018, and the European Parliament voted for it at first reading on March 26, 2019. The procedure is listed as awaiting the Council's first-reading position, so the directive is still in force and Europe keeps changing.

Australia, New Zealand and Chile

In Australia, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, the ACT and Norfolk Island start daylight saving at 2:00 AM on the first Sunday in October and end it at 3:00 AM on the first Sunday in April. Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory do not use it. Lord Howe Island moves its clocks by 30 minutes instead of an hour. South Australia changes on the same days at its own half-hour offset, from UTC+9:30 to UTC+10:30. Queensland stays on UTC+10, so from October 4 until the first Sunday in April, Brisbane is an hour behind Sydney; the rest of the year the two cities show the same time.

New Zealand's Daylight Time Order 2007 sets the last Sunday in September for the start, at 2:00 AM, and the first Sunday in April for the end, at 3:00 AM. In 2026 the clocks went back on April 5 and go forward on September 27; the government's page gives April 4, 2027 for the next end.

Chile changes at midnight on a Saturday. Decree 98 of 2026 advances the official time by 60 minutes from 24:00 on the first Saturday of September 2026 to 24:00 on the first Saturday of April 2027, and sets the same pattern up to April 2029. It covers mainland Chile and Easter Island; the Aysén and Magallanes regions stay on UTC−3 all year.

Places that do not change their clocks

Many countries never changed their clocks, and several have stopped. Brazil ended its summer time with Decree 9,772 of April 25, 2019. Mexico's Ley de los Husos Horarios took effect on October 30, 2022 and repealed the decree that had set its nationwide seasonal time; according to the IANA data, some places along the US border, such as Tijuana, still change on the US dates. Every place below keeps one UTC offset on every day of 2026, checked day by day against the IANA time zone database:

Why the time difference changes for a few weeks

Because the US and Europe switch on different Sundays, the gap between them shrinks twice a year. New York is normally 5 hours behind London. In 2026 it is 4 hours from March 8 to March 28 and again from October 25 to October 31. A weekly 11:00 AM call in New York lands at 4:00 PM in London most of the year, and at 3:00 PM in those weeks. The meeting planner lines up working hours for any date, so pick a date inside the gap weeks when you schedule across the Atlantic.

Across hemispheres the effect is larger, because one side moves forward while the other moves back. London and Sydney:

A day with 23 or 25 hours

On the night of a change, the clock and the real elapsed time part ways. In New York, noon on Saturday, March 7, to noon on Sunday, March 8, is 23 hours; noon to noon across November 1 is 25 hours. Clock times from 2:00 to 2:59 AM do not exist on the spring night, and 1:00 to 1:59 AM happens twice in the fall. If you count down to an event, the countdown timer counts real hours, so the last day before a spring change is one hour shorter than a plain count of days suggests.

The change does not add daylight. It moves the clock against the sun. With the NOAA equations of the sunrise and sunset calculator, New York's sunset moves from 5:54 PM on March 7 to 6:55 PM on March 8, and sunrise from 6:20 AM to 7:18 AM. In the fall it runs the other way: sunset at 5:53 PM on October 31, at 4:52 PM on November 1.

Before the next change

• Check the clocks that do not update themselves. Ovens, cars and wall clocks keep the old time until you change them.
• Read times in the other city's local time. For a meeting or a flight, convert the time for the exact date, not for today.
• Mind the night shift. A shift that covers the change is an hour shorter or longer on the clock than usual.
• Update your devices. In the three Canadian provinces that stop changing, the correct time on November 1, 2026 depends on the time zone data on your phone or computer.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• 15 U.S.C. 260a, Advancement of time; superseding of local time (Cornell LII)
• NIST: Daylight Saving Time rules
• Congress.gov: H.R. 139, Sunshine Protection Act of 2025
• Office of the Clerk, US House: Roll Call 238, H.R. 139, July 14, 2026
• National Research Council Canada: Time zones and daylight saving time
• BC Gov News: final time change in British Columbia, March 2, 2026
• Government of Alberta: Alberta's new time system (ABT)
• Province of Manitoba: Manitoba will move to permanent daylight saving time, September 17, 2026
• EUR-Lex: Directive 2000/84/EC on summer-time arrangements
• European Parliament Legislative Observatory: Seasonal changes of time, 2018/0332(COD)
• The Summer Time Order 2002, article 2 (legislation.gov.uk)
• GOV.UK: When do the clocks change?
• NSW Communities and Justice: Daylight saving
• NSW Government: Daylight saving
• Tasmania: Daylight Saving Regulations 2017, regulation 3
• New Zealand Government: Daylight saving
• New Zealand Government: Daylight saving, governing legislation
• Chile, Ministerio del Interior: Decreto 98 of 2026 on the official time (Ley Chile)
• Brazil: Decreto nº 9.772 of April 25, 2019 (Câmara dos Deputados)
• Supreme Court of Mexico: synthesis of the Diario Oficial, October 28, 2022 (Ley de los Husos Horarios)
• IANA: Time Zone Database
• IANA Time Zone Database: release notes (NEWS), releases 2026a to 2026e
• NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory: Solar Calculator, calculation details

Written by Tobias Kurth, designer. Updated October 20, 2026.