Daylight saving time in 2026

Daylight saving time moves local clocks forward, usually by an hour, for the lighter part of the year so that evenings hold more usable daylight. The underlying instant never changes — only the label a region puts on it — which is why a meeting fixed to a wall-clock time shifts relative to other countries twice a year.

No, and this is the main source of scheduling mistakes. The European Union switches on the last Sunday of March and October at 01:00 UTC, so every EU country changes at the same instant. The United States switches on the second Sunday of March and the first Sunday of November at 02:00 in each local zone, so its zones change at different instants. For about three weeks each spring the usual gap between Europe and North America is an hour smaller than normal.

It does not exist. Where clocks jump from 02:00 to 03:00, no local time between those readings occurs, so a time like 02:30 cannot be converted. Our converter flags such an input instead of silently moving it, because silently choosing for you is how an appointment ends up an hour out.

When clocks go back, the hour before the change repeats. A local time like 01:30 occurs twice — once on daylight saving time and once on standard time — an hour apart. Any tool that reports a single answer for such an input has quietly picked one; ours asks which you meant.

Almost everywhere that observes daylight saving time shifts by exactly one hour, though Lord Howe Island shifts by thirty minutes.

95 of the zones covered here hold a single offset all year, including most of Asia, the Gulf states, and — inside a country that otherwise changes its clocks — Arizona. For those places the offset shown on a city page is correct on every date.