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When Do the Clocks Change?

A live countdown to the next daylight saving transition, anywhere in the world.

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Clock changes by country

How this works

Rather than looking the answer up in a table that goes stale, this page reads your browser's own timezone database and searches forward for the next moment the UTC offset actually changes. That means it stays correct when a country amends its rules, and it works for every zone your browser knows about, not just a handful of popular ones. The countdown runs against the real clock, so you can leave the page open.

Why the dates move each year

Daylight saving transitions are defined by a rule rather than a fixed date — "the second Sunday in March", "the last Sunday in October" — so the calendar date shifts annually. Transitions are also scheduled in the small hours deliberately, when the fewest people are travelling, working shifts, or running scheduled jobs. That is why 2:00 a.m. is such a common changeover time.

The gap that does not exist, and the hour that happens twice

When clocks spring forward, an hour of local time simply never occurs. In the United States, 2:30 a.m. does not exist on the morning of the change — a meeting scheduled for it is not a valid local time. In autumn the reverse happens and an hour repeats, so 1:30 a.m. occurs twice, an hour apart. This is why software should store timestamps in UTC and convert for display: local time is genuinely ambiguous twice a year.

Not everywhere participates

Roughly a third of the world observes daylight saving, and the share has been falling. Most of Africa and Asia never adopted it, Russia abandoned it in 2014, Mexico scrapped it nationally in 2022, and Brazil dropped it in 2019. Within countries that do observe it, exceptions are common — Arizona and Hawaii in the United States, Queensland and Western Australia in Australia, Saskatchewan in Canada. The countries below each have their own page with the specifics.

Common questions

Do the clocks go forward or back?
In spring they go forward, and you lose an hour of sleep. In autumn they go back and you gain one. The countdown above tells you which is next for your zone, and by how much.
Why is it called daylight saving and not savings?
The correct form is singular — daylight saving time — because "saving" acts as an adjective describing the time, not a plural noun. The plural is extremely common in speech and nobody will misunderstand you.
Is daylight saving being abolished?
In places, gradually. The European Parliament voted in 2019 to end seasonal clock changes, but member states have never agreed on implementation and the EU still changes its clocks. Mexico and Brazil have both abolished it outright. In the United States, permanent-time bills are introduced regularly and have not passed.
What time exactly does the change happen?
It varies by country. The United States and Canada change at 2:00 a.m. local time, the United Kingdom at 1:00 a.m. GMT, and the EU simultaneously at 01:00 UTC across all member states, meaning different local times in different countries.