When do clocks fall back in 2026 in the US, UK and Europe

Par Sam Arkwell · publié le 13 septembre 2026

The short answer: in the United States and most of Canada, clocks fall back on Sunday, November 1, 2026, at 2:00 am local time, back to 1:00 am. In the UK and across the European Union, the change comes a week earlier: Sunday, October 25, 2026. Both switches happen overnight Saturday into Sunday, both hand you an extra hour of sleep, and the seven days between them are the annual window when transatlantic time differences quietly shift by an hour.

The exact mechanics of both switches, why the dates diverge, and what to check during the strange week in between.

November 1 in America: how the fall-back works

The US rule is fixed by law: daylight saving time ends on the first Sunday of November, which lands on November 1 in 2026. The mechanics are always the same: at 2:00 am local time, clocks fall back to 1:00 am, and the 1 o’clock hour runs twice. The switch rolls across the continent time zone by time zone, each region changing at its own 2:00 am, and the practical effects are familiar: an extra hour that night, brighter mornings immediately, and sunsets that suddenly land an hour earlier on the evening commute.

The exceptions are worth knowing: Hawaii and most of Arizona never change, staying on standard time all year, along with Puerto Rico and several territories. For everyone else, the fall-back is automatic on phones and computers, and manual on the stubborn holdouts: ovens, microwaves, cars, and wall clocks, the Sunday-morning ritual of twice a year.

Canada follows the same calendar as the US in most provinces, so the border stays synchronized. The result: on the morning of November 1, the whole North American workweek wakes up on winter time, seven weeks after the September equinox started the descent toward shorter days.

October 25 in Europe: same idea, different rulebook

Europe wrote its own rule: clocks change on the last Sunday of October, which is October 25 in 2026. In the UK, the switch happens at 2:00 am local time, back to 1:00 am. The European Union does it with continental precision: every member state changes simultaneously at 01:00 UTC, meaning 2:00 am in Berlin and Paris, 3:00 am in Athens, so the bloc’s internal time differences never wobble even for an hour.

Why two different dates for the same idea? Simply because the rulebooks were drafted independently: the US date comes from the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which stretched American daylight saving deeper into November, while the EU directive standardized the older last-Sunday-of-October habit. Neither side has moved since, and the perennial talk of abolishing the change altogether, debated on both continents for years, has yet to change a single clock.

The strange week: October 25 to November 1

Between the two switches lies the calendar’s odd little corridor: for one week each autumn, the transatlantic time differences shift. Europe has already fallen back; America has not. London to New York, normally 5 hours, becomes 4 hours; Paris to New York drops from 6 to 5; Los Angeles to London narrows from 8 to 7. Every year this week quietly sabotages transatlantic meetings, earnings calls and long-distance families, because recurring calendar entries pinned to one side of the ocean slide an hour on the other.

The survival rules are simple. Anything scheduled across the Atlantic between October 25 and November 1 deserves a double-check, with the meeting’s anchor time zone confirmed: a calendar invite created in UTC or in the counterpart’s zone will display shifted, correctly but surprisingly. Live sports and TV broadcasts from the US air an hour later on European clocks that week. And for an unambiguous reference while the zones dance, our online clock shows the exact time in any zone, while the countdown timer will happily count down to either switch. The week itself belongs to the calendar’s long tradition of human-made time quirks, cousin to the seven-day week nobody ordered and everybody keeps: the sky changes gradually, but the clocks change by committee, one Sunday at a time.

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