Daylight Saving Time 2026: When Does It Start and End?
You had the meeting confirmed. Both sides agreed: 9:00 AM in New York, 7:30 PM in India. Everyone put it in their calendar. Then the US moved its clocks on a Sunday in March, and the call quietly moved with it. For anyone who kept the invite at "9:00 AM New York time", it was now 6:30 PM in India. For anyone who had written "7:30 PM IST" in an email, it was now 10:00 AM in New York.
Nobody forgot anything. Daylight saving time is a silent schedule change that happens twice a year, and who it affects depends on whose clock the meeting was fixed to. This page shows what happens in 2026, with the periods between clock changes worked out for the pairs that people ask about most.
When Clocks Change in 2026
| Region | Clocks go forward | Clocks go back |
|---|---|---|
| US and most of Canada | Sunday, March 8 | Sunday, November 1 |
| UK and EU | Sunday, March 29 | Sunday, October 25 |
| Australia (NSW, Victoria, ACT, Tasmania, South Australia) | Sunday, October 4 | Sunday, April 5 |
| New Zealand | Sunday, September 27 | Sunday, April 5 |
Three Canadian provinces are exceptions in 2026. British Columbia moved forward on March 8 and stopped changing its clocks. Alberta and Manitoba have decided to do the same, so they don't go back on November 1. Saskatchewan and Yukon never change, and neither do Arizona and Hawaii in the US. The daylight saving time 2026 page has the full list of regions and what each one does.
The Gap Calendar for 2026
Because countries change on different dates, a gap that looks fixed isn't. Here is how far ahead the second city is of the first during each stretch of 2026, worked out from the time zone database:
| Dates | New York to London | New York to India | New York to Sydney | London to Sydney | London to India |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 1 to Mar 7 | 5 h | 10.5 h | 16 h | 11 h | 5.5 h |
| Mar 8 to Mar 28 | 4 h | 9.5 h | 15 h | 11 h | 5.5 h |
| Mar 29 to Apr 4 | 5 h | 9.5 h | 15 h | 10 h | 4.5 h |
| Apr 5 to Oct 3 | 5 h | 9.5 h | 14 h | 9 h | 4.5 h |
| Oct 4 to Oct 24 | 5 h | 9.5 h | 15 h | 10 h | 4.5 h |
| Oct 25 to Oct 31 | 4 h | 9.5 h | 15 h | 11 h | 5.5 h |
| Nov 1 to Dec 31 | 5 h | 10.5 h | 16 h | 11 h | 5.5 h |
Read across a row for one stretch of the year, and down a column to see when one pair's gap moves. New York and Sydney move four times in the year. New York and India move twice, because only the US changes. New York and London are four hours apart for two stretches, the three weeks in March after the US moves and the week in late October after the UK moves, and five hours apart the rest of the year.
Where It Breaks Schedules
The clock change itself is never the problem. The problems are:
- A fixed clock time. An invite stored as "9:00 AM" without a time zone name doesn't move when the offset does, so it's wrong for someone from then on. A named zone, like "America/New_York", follows the change.
- A fixed UTC offset. "UTC-5" is Eastern Standard Time. In summer New York is UTC-4, so anything set to "UTC-5" is an hour off from March 8 to November 1.
- The week after. Fall back is the sneaky one: Monday, November 2 is the first working day on the new clock, and recurring meetings feel wrong because people remembered the summer schedule.
Phoenix is a good gut check for how "no change" plays out. Arizona stays on Mountain Standard Time all year, so in summer it shows the same time as Los Angeles, and in winter the same as Denver. The gap between Phoenix and the rest of the US moves twice a year even though Phoenix doesn't.
How to Keep Up
Use a named time zone for every recurring meeting, and check any invite that crosses two systems in the week after each change. For one-off checks, the time zone converter uses the rules in force on the date you choose, read from your browser's copy of the time zone database, so keep your browser up to date. The world clock shows the current time in cities you add; it doesn't remember them if you reload.
Where things go wrong is in spreadsheets with hard-coded offsets, calendar apps set to a fixed "GMT+X", and arithmetic done without looking at the date.
What to Do Next
Look at your recurring meetings now and find the ones that cross a region that changes on a different date from yours. For each, decide whose clock it is fixed to, and put that in the invite. If you want the dates for 2027 or 2028, the same page exists for each year, and for a week-by-week view of any pair you can use the table above as a template. DST rules by country covers places that behave differently from these.
Related Articles
- DST Rules by Country: The Complete Guide: beyond the US, UK and EU, which countries have abolished DST, which run it backwards, and Lebanon's 2023 two-time-zone week.
- UTC vs GMT: What's the Difference and When Does It Matter?: how UTC and GMT differ, and why UTC never changes for daylight saving.
- How to Calculate Time Difference Between Two Countries: the method for any two places, including the weeks the gap moves.
- US Time Zones Explained: EST, CST, MST, PST and How They Work: all the US zones, the Arizona exception and state-level splits.
Related glossary terms: What Is DST? · UTC vs GMT · What Is a Time Zone?