When the clocks change in October and November 2026
Short answer
In 2026 the European Union and the United Kingdom set clocks back one hour on Sunday 25 October, and in the UK that happens at 2:00 a.m. local time, which is 1:00 UTC. The United States and most of Canada set clocks back at 2:00 a.m. local time on Sunday 1 November. Hawaii, most of Arizona, India, China, and Japan do not change. Studies disagree about whether the shift saves energy.
Two Sundays, not one worldwide switch
"The clocks change this weekend" is only true for some places. In autumn 2026 there are two different Sundays, and a long list of places that do not take part at all.
On Sunday 25 October 2026, the European Union and the United Kingdom set clocks back one hour. That date is the last Sunday in October. On Sunday 1 November 2026, the United States and most of Canada set clocks back one hour at 2:00 a.m. local time. That date is the first Sunday in November.
Both moves do the same local thing. The clock returns from daylight saving time to standard time, so sunrise and sunset happen at an earlier clock time. An afternoon that felt long in September feels shorter in November, even though the planet did not add or remove an hour of daylight. The clock label moved.
Between those Sundays there is an overlap week. The UK has already changed. Most of the United States has not. A meeting time that was correct in early October can be wrong on 28 October and wrong again, in a new way, on 2 November. That is the whole reason to do the math on paper instead of trusting a habit.
This article is a calendar and arithmetic guide. It does not say whether daylight saving time is a good law. It tells you when the offset changes, who skips the change, and how to convert one real meeting.
Put both dates on a calendar now. The <a href="/exam-calendar/">exam calendar</a> works even though these are not exams. A date you can see is harder to miss than a date you meant to remember.
The October change in the UK and the European Union
In the United Kingdom the change is at 2:00 a.m. local time on Sunday 25 October 2026. At that moment the UK is still on British Summer Time, which is UTC+1. So 2:00 a.m. BST is 1:00 UTC. The clocks then go back one hour, to 1:00 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time. GMT matches UTC+0. The UK stays there until spring.
The European Union changes on the same civil date, and the shared instant is 1:00 UTC. Countries on Central European Summer Time move from 3:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m. Countries on Eastern European Summer Time move from 4:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. The local numbers differ because the starting offsets differ. The UTC instant is the same.
You do not need to memorize every capital. You need the rule: last Sunday in October, one hour back, coordinated at 1:00 UTC. In 2026 that Sunday is 25 October. You can confirm a city on a <a href="/world-clock/">world clock</a> instead of guessing from the continent.
The hour between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m. happens twice in the UK that night. A note that says "1:30 a.m." is ambiguous unless it names BST or GMT. Almost no student schedule needs that half hour. The useful check is the next afternoon, when your usual conversion is off by sixty minutes.
If a phone is set to set itself, it will usually jump. A classroom clock, a watch, and the clock on an oven will not. Walk through the house on Sunday morning and fix the ones with knobs. If a timetable is written in minutes, the <a href="/unit-converter/">unit converter</a> is a simple way to see that one hour is 60 minutes, not 100.
The November change in the United States and Canada
On Sunday 1 November 2026, the United States and most of Canada set clocks back one hour at 2:00 a.m. local time. Each zone does this on its own clock. When it is 2:00 a.m. in New York, it is still 11:00 p.m. in Los Angeles on Saturday. California's change comes three hours later by a UTC clock, at its own 2:00 a.m.
After the change, Eastern time is UTC−5, Central is UTC−6, Mountain is UTC−7, and Pacific is UTC−8. Those are the standard offsets. Before the change, in late October, those regions are still one hour ahead of these winter numbers: Eastern UTC−4, Central UTC−5, Mountain UTC−6, and Pacific UTC−7.
Most of Canada moves with the US date. Not every region does. Saskatchewan stays on central standard time all year. Yukon stays on UTC−7 all year. A few border towns follow a neighbour's clock instead of the rest of their province. "Canada changed" is too blunt for a meeting. Ask for the city.
Saturday 31 October is still on daylight time in the evening. The extra hour arrives at 2:00 a.m. Sunday. The neighbourhood plan is in <a href="/blog/halloween-2026-saturday-neighbourhood-plan/">the Halloween article</a>. Election Day, two days later, is already on standard time in most of the country, so <a href="/blog/us-election-night-2026-how-counting-works/">election night counting</a> should use November offsets, not October ones.
Write "2:00 a.m. local" on your note. People mix it up with the UK's 1:00 UTC figure and then shift a US clock at the wrong instant. They are different statements about different places.
Places that leave the clock alone
Hawaii does not use daylight saving time. It stays on Hawaii standard time, UTC−10. When California moves in November, the gap between Honolulu and Los Angeles changes. In late October that gap is three hours. After 1 November it is two hours. Hawaii did not move. California did.
India does not change clocks. Indian Standard Time is UTC+5:30 all year. The half hour is easy to drop. A 15:00 UTC moment is 20:30 in India, not 20:00. China does not change clocks either. The whole country uses China Standard Time, UTC+8, even though the country is wide. Japan does not change clocks. Japan Standard Time is UTC+9 all year.
Those three countries are the cleanest part of an international timetable. Their offsets in October are their offsets in January. If a converted time looks different in November, the change happened on the other side of the call.
A good habit from <a href="/blog/how-to-convert-time-zones/">how to convert time zones</a> is to write every place as a UTC offset before you do arithmetic. "London evening" is not an offset. "UTC+0" is.
A 15:00 London meeting, worked twice
Here is one meeting, after the UK has changed, shown in two weeks. The local time in London stays 15:00. Some other cities move, and some do not.
Friday 30 October 2026. The UK has been on GMT since 25 October. London 15:00 is 15:00 UTC. The United States has not yet changed, so the East is still on UTC−4.
- London: 15:00
- New York: 11:00
- Chicago: 10:00
- Denver: 09:00
- Los Angeles: 08:00
- Phoenix: 08:00, because most of Arizona is already on UTC−7
- Honolulu: 05:00
- Delhi: 20:30
- Beijing or Shanghai: 23:00
- Tokyo: 00:00 on Saturday 31 October
The gap from London to New York that Friday is four hours, not the five hours many people remember from summer.
Monday 2 November 2026. London is still GMT, so 15:00 is still 15:00 UTC. The US and most of Canada changed on Sunday. New York is now UTC−5.
India, China, and Japan did not move between the two lists. Their clock times for a 15:00 London meeting are the same on both days. If someone in those countries "fixed" the meeting by an hour, they created an error.
If you plan a repeating call, use the method in <a href="/blog/how-to-plan-meeting-across-time-zones/">how to plan a meeting across time zones</a>. Write the UTC time in the invitation. Let each city display local time from that, and recheck on the Monday after each Sunday in this article.
What the energy research does not settle
You will hear that daylight saving time exists to save energy. Treat that sentence as a claim, not as a result you must accept.
Houses, latitudes, and decades are not the same, so one winter in one country does not settle the rest. This article will not pick a winner among those studies. It is accurate to say that studies disagree. You can convert a meeting correctly without settling the debate.
Common mistakes during the overlap week
Using one Sunday for the whole world. The UK date is 25 October 2026. The US date is 1 November 2026. Mixing them shifts every international time by an hour.
Forgetting that 2:00 a.m. in the UK is 1:00 UTC. The local clock and the UTC clock are not the same number that night, because the UK is still on UTC+1 when the change starts.
Assuming a country is one zone. The United States is not. China, for civil time, mostly is. Canada is not. Arizona is not fully one answer. Start with the city.
Dropping India's half hour. UTC+5:30 is not UTC+5. Thirty minutes is enough to miss the start of a class.
"Fixing" a city that did not change. Delhi, Shanghai, Tokyo, Honolulu, and Phoenix do not spring forward or fall back with London or New York. If London moves and they do not, their local time for a London meeting changes only because London moved.
Editing only the title of a calendar event. If the software stores a time zone, moving the displayed hour by hand can double the correction. Learn whether the event is tied to "Europe/London" or to a fixed UTC time. When you are unsure, write the time in UTC in the description.
Scheduling the repeated hour. Do not plan a submission, a shift change, or a travel pickup between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m. on the change night without naming the offset. Pick a daytime hour instead.
A checklist for both Sundays
What to do this week
Pick one real commitment and convert it both ways. Use 15:00 in London if you do not have your own example. Write the New York time for Friday 30 October and the New York time for Monday 2 November. Then write Delhi for both. Delhi should match. New York should not.
Open the <a href="/world-clock/">world clock</a> and check your arithmetic against the cities. If you and the clock disagree, find which offset you used. That single correction is the lesson.
Tell one person in the house which Sunday applies to your kitchen clock, and which Sunday applies to a relative in another country. The sentence is short. The mistakes it prevents are not.
Frequently asked questions
Do the UK and the United States change clocks on the same day in 2026?
No. The United Kingdom and the European Union set clocks back on Sunday 25 October 2026, the last Sunday in October. The United States and most of Canada set clocks back on Sunday 1 November 2026, the first Sunday in November. For a little more than a week, the usual hour gap between London and many US cities is one hour smaller than it is in summer or in winter.
What time is the UK change in UTC?
In the UK the clocks go back at 2:00 a.m. British Summer Time. That moment is 1:00 UTC. The local clock then reads 1:00 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time. Phones set to update automatically usually make the jump on their own. A wall clock, an oven, and a watch you set by hand will not. Check those the next time you walk past them.
Which places do not change in this season?
Hawaii and most of Arizona do not use daylight saving time. India, China, and Japan do not change clocks at all. Most of Canada does change with the United States, but not every region. Saskatchewan and Yukon are examples of places that stay put. If a person names only a country, ask for the city and check it on a world clock before you promise a meeting time.
Does putting the clocks back save energy?
Do not treat that as a proven fact. The original hope was that a later sunrise and an earlier sunset on the clock would cut evening lighting. Studies in different countries have found small savings, no clear savings, or even a small increase in energy use. Legislatures keep or drop the practice for several reasons. The calendar dates above are about the law, not about a settled science result.
