DST 2026: every country's policy and the year's transitions

What changed in 2026

2026 brought an unusual number of daylight-saving rule changes. Most were moves to permanent summer time, not abolition of DST in favour of standard time:

Canada split. British Columbia stayed on UTC−7 after springing forward on March 8, 2026. Alberta and the Northwest Territories stayed on UTC−6, and Manitoba moved to permanent UTC−5 on October 31, 2026. None of the four fell back on November 1. Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces still switch; Saskatchewan and Yukon already did not. The IANA tz database recorded these changes in releases 2026b to 2026e.

Morocco returned to UTC+0. From September 20, 2026 Morocco uses UTC+0 all year, ending the system it had used since 2018 (UTC+1, dropping to UTC+0 during Ramadan) (IANA tz 2026c).

Cuba did not fall back. On October 24, 2026 Cuba's government announced that it would stay on UTC−4 instead of returning to UTC−5 on November 1, and keep UTC−4 until November 7, 2027 (IANA tz 2026f). With eight days' notice, many devices had not received the update in time; the tz database published the change in release 2026f.

The U.S. House passed the Sunshine Protection Act. On July 14, 2026 the House passed H.R. 139 by 308 to 117. It would make DST the permanent standard time nationwide, while letting states that already skip DST stay on standard time. As of November 5, 2026 the Senate has not voted. If it does not pass before the 119th Congress ends in January 2027, the bill lapses.

The EU did not move. The European Parliament voted in March 2019 to end mandatory clock changes, but the Council of the EU has never agreed a position, so Directive 2000/84/EC still applies and all 27 member states still switch on the last Sundays of March and October.

When a government changes its rules, the IANA Time Zone Database publishes a new `tzdata` release, often within days, and operating systems, browsers and language runtimes then ship it. How fast that happens is the weak point: Cuba's eight days' notice in October 2026 was shorter than most update cycles. Out-of-date tzdata is the most common silent cause of wrong local times after a policy change.

Spring forward and fall back: the 2026 dates

United States and the Canadian provinces that still switch. Spring forward Sunday, March 8, 2026 at 02:00 local (clocks go from 01:59:59 to 03:00:00). Fall back Sunday, November 1, 2026 at 02:00 local (clocks go from 01:59:59 back to 01:00:00). The rule, second Sunday of March to first Sunday of November, comes from the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

European Union and United Kingdom. Spring forward Sunday, March 29, 2026 and fall back Sunday, October 25, 2026, both at 01:00 UTC: 01:00 local in the UK, Ireland and Portugal, 02:00 in Central European Time and 03:00 in Eastern European Time. Every EU clock changes at the same instant. The UK sets the same dates in its own Summer Time Order 2002.

Australia (New South Wales, Victoria, ACT, Tasmania, South Australia). DST ended Sunday, April 5, 2026 at 03:00 local and restarted Sunday, October 4, 2026 at 02:00 local: the first Sundays of April and October. South Australia does the same on its half-hour offset (UTC+9:30, UTC+10:30 in summer). Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory do not observe DST.

New Zealand. DST ended Sunday, April 5, 2026 and restarted Sunday, September 27, 2026: the first Sunday of April and the last Sunday of September.

Chile. Mainland Chile changes at midnight between Saturday and Sunday: back to UTC−4 on the night of April 4–5, 2026 and forward to UTC−3 on the night of September 5–6, 2026. The Magallanes and Aysén regions stay on UTC−3 all year (Aysén since 2025). Easter Island switches on the same nights, between UTC−6 and UTC−5.

Mexico (northern border municipalities only). Follow the U.S. dates: March 8 and November 1, 2026. This covers Baja California and the border municipalities of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas. Sonora has not observed DST since 1998.

Cuba. Sprang forward on Sunday, March 8, 2026 at midnight, and did not fall back on November 1 (see above).

Israel, Lebanon and Palestine also observe DST, on rules close to, but not the same as, the EU's. Egypt observes DST from the last Friday of April to the last Thursday of October.

Desync weeks

When two regions both observe DST but change on different Sundays, the gap between them shifts by an hour for a few weeks. In 2026:

• March 8–29: the U.S. had sprung forward and Europe had not, so New York was 4 hours behind London instead of 5. Three weeks.
• October 25 – November 1: Europe had fallen back and the U.S. had not. Again 4 hours instead of 5. One week.

In 2027 the same windows are March 14–28 and October 31 – November 7. Cross-Atlantic recurring meetings shift during both; see Meeting across time zones for how to handle them.

The DST tracker shows each country's current status and next change. The time zone converter applies the rules for any future date you pick, which is the quickest way to check a pair of zones inside a desync window.

The 2027 dates

• U.S. and Canadian provinces that still switch: Sunday, March 14 and Sunday, November 7, 2027.
• EU and UK: Sunday, March 28 and Sunday, October 31, 2027, at 01:00 UTC.
• Australia's southern states: DST ends Sunday, April 4 and restarts Sunday, October 3, 2027.
• New Zealand: DST ends Sunday, April 4 and restarts Sunday, September 26, 2027.
• Mainland Chile: back on the night of April 3–4, forward on the night of September 4–5, 2027.

Computed from IANA tzdata 2026e. Rules can change at short notice; the DST tracker is the place to check before a specific date.

Countries that don't observe DST

In tzdata 2026e, 68 of the 247 country and territory codes listed in the database's `zone.tab` file have at least one clock change scheduled in 2027. Everywhere else keeps one offset all year. That includes:

Asia and the Middle East: China, India, Japan, South Korea, every Southeast Asian country, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Gulf states, Iran (no DST since 2022), Iraq (none since 2008), and Jordan and Syria (permanent UTC+3 since 2022). Israel, Lebanon and Palestine are the exceptions that still change.

Africa: Almost the whole continent, now including Morocco (permanent UTC+0 since September 2026). Egypt is the exception: it reintroduced DST in 2023. Spain's Canary Islands follow the EU schedule.

Europe and Central Asia: Russia stopped seasonal clock changes in 2011 (staying on summer time) and in October 2014 moved its clocks back an hour to permanent standard time. Turkey has stayed on UTC+3 since 2016, Belarus on UTC+3 since 2011. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Mongolia do not change. Ukraine and Moldova still follow the EU dates.

The Americas: Brazil (none since 2019), Argentina (none since 2009), Paraguay (permanent UTC−3 since October 2024), Mexico outside the border strip (none since 2022), and most of Central America and the Caribbean. In Canada: British Columbia, Alberta, the Northwest Territories, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Yukon. In the U.S.: Hawaii and most of Arizona (the Navajo Nation in Arizona does observe DST).

Oceania: Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory, and most Pacific island nations. Fiji and Samoa have not used DST since early 2021.

Why DST is controversial

DST was first adopted nationally in 1916, by Germany and Austria-Hungary during the First World War, followed by the UK the same year and the U.S. in 1918. The aim was to save fuel by moving daylight into the evening.

The energy case has largely collapsed. The U.S. Department of Energy's 2008 report to Congress on the four weeks added to DST in 2007 found a saving of about 0.5% of electricity per day during those weeks, about 0.03% of annual use. A study of Indiana's statewide adoption of DST in 2006 (Kotchen and Grant, 2011) found household electricity use rose by about 1%.

The debate is now mostly about health and daylight. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the European Sleep Research Society favour permanent standard time, which keeps clock time closer to solar time and gives brighter winter mornings. They cite short-term rises in heart attacks, traffic accidents and sleep loss after the spring transition. Supporters of permanent DST point to lighter evenings for retail, sport and outdoor activity. The 2026 changes in Canada went that way; the AASM position goes the other.

Polls in both the U.S. and Europe show majorities in favour of ending the twice-yearly change but no consistent majority for which time to keep. That split is a large part of why the EU proposal and the U.S. bill have stalled for years.

How to handle DST in scheduling tools

The rule: store every timestamp in UTC, together with the IANA zone identifier where it originated. Do not store a local-time string or a fixed offset. The IANA identifier carries the rules; the UTC instant is the moment; local time is something you compute when displaying it.

For developers:

• Use a library that gets its rules from a maintained copy of tzdata. JavaScript libraries such as `date-fns-tz` and Luxon use the runtime's `Intl` data, so the runtime (Node.js, the browser) decides which tzdata version you get. Python's `zoneinfo` reads the system tzdata or the `tzdata` package. Java and js-joda ship their own copies.
• Update tzdata whenever a release affects zones you serve, not on a fixed schedule. In 2026 that meant at least six releases.
• For recurring events, keep the zone with the start time. iCalendar (RFC 5545) does this with the `TZID` parameter on `DTSTART`; calendars that drop it produce recurrences that drift at every transition.
• Test the transition hours. In the U.S., 02:00–02:59 does not exist on the spring-forward day and 01:00–01:59 happens twice on the fall-back day. Most date-arithmetic bugs are in those two hours.

For everyday use, the time zone converter handles a single moment on any date (enter a recurring meeting's date in a transition week to see where it lands), and the meeting planner finds overlapping working hours for several people at today's offsets.

Looking ahead

The U.S. Senate is the next decision point. The House vote in July 2026 was the furthest the Sunshine Protection Act has got in the House. Senate action before January 3, 2027 would put it on the President's desk; otherwise it must be reintroduced in the next Congress.

Canada's split may spread or settle. With four jurisdictions on permanent time and the rest still switching, the gap between, for example, Vancouver and Toronto is now three hours in summer and two in winter. Watch Ontario and Quebec.

The EU is the slowest case. A Council position needs a qualified majority among 27 governments with very different latitudes. Nothing in 2026 changed that.

Reversals happen. Egypt reinstated DST in 2023 after not using it since 2014, and Morocco abandoned its 2018 system in 2026. Any policy described here can change; the dated tz release notes are the record of what actually took effect.

For a foundational reference on how time zones, UTC and DST fit together, see the complete guide to time zones.

Glossary

Spring forward

The transition in which clocks move ahead one hour, making that day 23 hours long. In the U.S. it happens on the second Sunday of March; in the EU and UK on the last Sunday of March. The skipped hour does not exist in local time, which is a common source of date-arithmetic bugs.

Fall back

The transition in which clocks move back one hour, making that day 25 hours long. In the U.S. it happens on the first Sunday of November; in the EU and UK on the last Sunday of October. The repeated hour occurs twice in local time.

Sunshine Protection Act

A U.S. bill that would make daylight saving time permanent across the country. A version passed the Senate in March 2022 but not the House. The 2025 version, H.R. 139, passed the House on July 14, 2026; as of November 5, 2026 the Senate has not voted on it.

EU Summer Time Directive

Directive 2000/84/EC, which requires all EU member states to start summer time on the last Sunday of March and end it on the last Sunday of October, at 01:00 UTC. A 2018 proposal to end the changes passed the European Parliament in 2019 but has not been agreed by the Council.

tzdata

The data release of the IANA Time Zone Database, named by year and letter (`2026a`, `2026b`, and so on). A new release comes out whenever a government changes its time-zone or DST rules; 2026 had at least six. Systems must install the update to show correct local times after a change.

Standard time

A region's time when daylight saving is not in effect. In the U.S. it runs from early November to mid-March; in the EU from late October to late March. Most of Asia, Africa and the tropics use standard time all year.

Permanent standard time

A policy of staying on standard time all year. Russia (since 2014), Mexico outside the border strip (since 2022), Brazil (since 2019) and Morocco (since 2026) use it. Sleep-medicine bodies generally prefer it to permanent summer time.

Permanent daylight saving time

A policy of staying on the summer offset all year. British Columbia, Alberta, the Northwest Territories and Manitoba moved to it in 2026, Paraguay in 2024, and Turkey in 2016. Locally it is often renamed as the new standard time.

Desync window

A period when two regions that both observe DST have changed on different dates, so the gap between them is an hour off its usual value. Between the U.S. and Europe it lasts two or three weeks in March (three in 2026, two in 2027) and one week around the end of October.