When do the clocks change?

The next clock change, wherever you are

The big number at the top is the number of days until the clocks change where you are. Clooock reads your device’s time zone and looks it up in the official time zone database (the IANA tz database, the same one your phone uses), so it also works for places with unusual rules. Tap the city to check another one, or switch to “By year” to see the dates of any year from 1970 to 2099.

For 2027, the United States springs forward on Sunday, March 14 (at 2:00 AM it becomes 3:00 AM) and falls back on Sunday, November 7. The European Union and the UK change on Sunday, March 28 and Sunday, October 31, at 1:00 UTC. Every region is on the daylight saving time 2027 page.

Daylight saving time rules by region

Each country sets its own rules. Most of them are fixed formulas, like “the second Sunday in March”, which is why the dates move a little every year.

In Europe every country moves at the same instant, 1:00 UTC, so the hour on the clock differs: 1:00 AM in London and Lisbon, 2:00 AM in Paris, Berlin and Rome, 3:00 AM in Athens and Helsinki. In North America each time zone changes at 2:00 AM local time, so the change ripples west over several hours. In the southern hemisphere, summer starts in September or October, so the clocks go forward when they go back up north.

Places that stopped changing the clocks

• Canada, 2026: British Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba sprang forward on March 8, 2026 for the last time and now keep daylight time all year, like the Northwest Territories. Most of Saskatchewan and Yukon already never change.
• Mexico: no clock change since October 30, 2022, except in border cities such as Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez and Matamoros, which follow the US dates.
• Brazil since 2019, Paraguay since October 2024 (UTC−3 all year), Morocco since September 20, 2026 (GMT all year, no more Ramadan switch).
• Also: Hawaii, Arizona (except the Navajo Nation), Puerto Rico, Russia (2014), Turkey (2016), Iran (2022), Japan, China, India and almost all of Africa.

Cuba is a special case: to save electricity, it kept summer time in November 2026 and announced it would stay on it until November 7, 2027.

Spring forward, fall back

The old saying still works. In spring the clocks go forward: at 2:00 AM it becomes 3:00 AM, the hour from 2:00 to 2:59 never happens, and the night lasts 23 hours. In the fall the clocks go back: at 2:00 AM it is 1:00 AM again, the hour from 1:00 to 1:59 happens twice, and the night lasts 25 hours.

Phones, computers and smartwatches change by themselves when the time zone is set automatically. Ovens, microwaves, car dashboards and wall clocks don’t. An alarm set for 7:00 AM on a phone rings at the new 7:00 AM; a separate online alarm clock in a browser tab follows your computer’s clock, too.

Night workers notice it most: a shift from 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM lasts 7 hours on the spring night and 9 hours on the fall night.

One hour less sleep: how to adjust

The spring change is the hard one. Losing an hour is like flying one time zone east, and most people need a few days to adjust. A few simple steps help:

• Go to bed 15 minutes earlier for the four nights before the change.
• Get daylight early on Sunday and Monday morning: light is the strongest signal for your body clock.
• Keep naps short and skip caffeine after early afternoon.
• For children, move dinner and bedtime 10 to 15 minutes earlier each day.

The fall change gives the hour back, but the earlier sunset can weigh on mood. Sleep doctors have taken sides: since 2020, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine supports permanent standard time, which follows the sun more closely in the morning. The sleep calculator helps you pick a bedtime.

Is daylight saving time ending?

In the United States, the House of Representatives passed the Sunshine Protection Act (H.R. 139) on July 14, 2026, by 308 votes to 117. It would make daylight saving time permanent nationwide. It still needs a Senate vote and the President’s signature; the Senate passed a similar bill in 2022 that then died in the House. Until a law is signed, the current dates apply. Federal law already lets a state stay on standard time all year, like Arizona and Hawaii, but not on daylight time, which is why several states have passed laws that only take effect if Congress acts.

In the European Union, 4.6 million people answered a 2018 consultation, 84% of them in favor of ending the change. The European Parliament voted to end it on March 26, 2019, by 410 votes to 192, but EU governments never agreed on which time to keep. Spain relaunched the debate in October 2025; by late 2026 the member states had still not decided, so the dates set by Directive 2000/84/EC still apply.

Why do we change the clocks?

The idea is to move an hour of daylight from the early morning, when most people sleep, to the evening. Germany and Austria were the first to do it nationwide, on April 30, 1916, to save coal during World War I. The UK followed on May 21, 1916, and the United States in 1918. Many countries brought it back after the 1973 oil crisis. Today the energy savings are small, and the debate is mostly about sleep, health and evening daylight.

How this page calculates

Your browser carries a copy of the IANA time zone database. The tool scans it around each change and pins the exact minute, which also catches recent decisions like British Columbia’s. The tables on the yearly pages (2026, 2027, 2028) are calculated from each country’s legal rule and checked against the same database. To compare cities, use the world clock or the time zone converter. For daylight itself, see sunrise and sunset times, and for the year ahead, the 2027 calendar.