When do the clocks change?

The rules

In the US, DST starts on the second Sunday of March and ends on the first Sunday of November (2:00 local time). In the EU and UK, clocks change on the last Sunday of March and the last Sunday of October (1:00 UTC).

How detection works

Your current status (DST or standard) and the countdown come from your device's time zone database, so they are exact wherever you are.

Why at two and not at midnight

The change is set at 2:00 in the morning for a practical reason: fewest people are out, night trains are rare and no calendar day gets skipped or repeated. At midnight a whole date would be lost or duplicated, with effects on contracts, deadlines and records.

In spring two becomes three and that night lasts twenty-three hours; in autumn three goes back to two and the night lasts twenty-five. It is why in autumn a digital clock shows the same hour twice, and an appointment set for 2:30 that night is ambiguous.

The last Sunday, not a fixed date

In the European Union the dates are the last Sunday in March and the last in October, the same for every country and tied to universal time rather than local time: so every European zone changes at the same instant and the gaps between Rome, Lisbon and Athens stay constant.

In the United States the dates are different: the second Sunday in March and the first in November. For two or three weeks a year the gap between Europe and America shifts by an hour, and that is the period when meetings booked months earlier collapse and flights seem to take an hour more or less.

The abolition announced and never delivered

In 2018 the European Parliament voted to abolish the clock change, leaving each country to choose permanent summer or winter time. The directive was never finally approved by the Council, and everything has stayed as it was ever since.

The sticking point is the risk of a patchwork of different zones between neighbouring countries: if France picks permanent summer time and Spain permanent winter time, the gap between Paris and Madrid becomes an hour where today there is none. That is why the decision keeps slipping.

Nearby tools

The exact time in other cities comes from World clock. If what interests you is how much daylight you actually gain, look at Sunrise and sunset, and for the start of the seasons Start of the seasons.