When Does Daylight Saving Time Start? March 14, 2027

Last updated October 14, 2026 · Written by Han with AI assistance, fact-checked against official sources.

Daylight saving time (DST) is the practice of moving clocks forward in spring and back in autumn. It is the main reason the time difference between two cities is not always the same number of hours.

What daylight saving time does

In spring, clocks are set forward by one hour, so sunrise and sunset happen one hour later by the clock. In autumn, clocks are set back and the region returns to standard time. The idea is to shift usable daylight toward the evening during the months when days are long. The total amount of daylight does not change; only the clock labels do.

Who uses it

Most of North America and Europe use daylight saving time, as do parts of Oceania, South America and the Middle East. Most of Asia and Africa do not, and neither do many countries close to the equator, where day length changes little through the year. Even inside countries that use it there are exceptions: Hawaii and most of Arizona stay on standard time all year.

Rules also change. Brazil ended daylight saving time in 2019, Mexico ended it in 2022, and Egypt reintroduced it in 2023. British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba and Morocco stopped in 2026, and Is Daylight Saving Time Permanent Now? lists every place that has stopped. This is why time zone databases are updated several times a year and why it helps to keep your browser or device up to date.

When the clocks change

The rules below give the same weekday every year. The tables show the actual dates and local clock times, calculated from the time zone database.

• United States and most of Canada: clocks go forward on the second Sunday in March and back on the first Sunday in November.
• European Union and United Kingdom: clocks go forward on the last Sunday in March and back on the last Sunday in October.
• Australia (states that use DST, such as New South Wales and Victoria): clocks go forward on the first Sunday in October and back on the first Sunday in April.
• New Zealand: clocks go forward on the last Sunday in September and back on the first Sunday in April.

Because the southern hemisphere has summer when the north has winter, "spring forward" happens in September or October there.

Why gaps between cities shift

When two places change their clocks on different dates, the time difference between them is temporarily different. The classic example is New York and London. Normally London is five hours ahead of New York. But the United States moves its clocks in early March and the United Kingdom does so in late March, so for roughly three weeks the gap is only four hours. The same thing happens in the autumn between the end of October and the first Sunday in November. The UK and US time difference guide lists those weeks for this year and next.

Places that never change their clocks, such as Tokyo, Singapore or Dubai, see their gap to DST regions change by one hour twice a year. For example, Tokyo is 14 hours ahead of New York in winter and 13 hours ahead in summer.

Practical tips

• When you schedule across regions, write the date, the time and the city. A number of hours on its own goes wrong at the next clock change.
• Be extra careful about meetings in the weeks around March and October/November.
• For recurring meetings, check whether your calendar keeps the meeting at a fixed local time in one city or a fixed UTC time.

To see the offset on a particular day, pick the date in Time Compare; it applies the daylight saving rules for that date.

Add the clock-change calendar: every daylight saving change in the US, the EU, the UK and southeast Australia in 2026 and 2027, plus the weeks when the gaps between them shift. To get next year's dates by themselves, subscribe to https://timeatlasworld.com/calendar/clock-changes.ics with your calendar app's "add calendar from URL" option.