Daylight Saving Time 2026: Dates, Clock Changes, and What Actually Shifts

Published 2026-07-16

Daylight saving time 2026 begins on Sunday, March 8, when clocks spring forward from 2:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m., and ends on Sunday, November 1, when they fall back from 2:00 a.m. to 1:00 a.m. You lose an hour in March and get it back in November.

The rule is fixed: DST starts on the second Sunday of March and ends on the first Sunday of November, every year, in every US state that observes it. 2026 happens to be the earliest both dates can land — March 8 is the earliest possible second Sunday, and November 1 the earliest possible first Sunday.

Below: the full US date table through 2029, what actually happens at 2 a.m. in each direction, which states never touch their clocks, how the shift moves each time zone's UTC offset, and the few weeks each year when the US and Europe are an hour out of step.

US Daylight Saving Time Dates, 2025–2029

These dates are set by federal law and verified against the IANA time zone database — the same source your phone pulls from.

The second-Sunday/first-Sunday rule means spring forward always lands somewhere between March 8 and March 14, and fall back between November 1 and November 7. No announcement is ever coming — any future year can be read straight off a calendar.

Both changes happen at 2:00 a.m. local time, so the country doesn't switch at once: Eastern goes first, then Central, Mountain, and Pacific, each an hour later.

What Happens at 2 a.m., in Both Directions

On March 8, 2026, clocks run 1:58, 1:59, then jump to 3:00. The 2 o'clock hour is skipped entirely — 2:30 a.m. on that date does not exist. Anything scheduled inside it (a cron job, a flight, a medication alarm) fires an hour off or not at all, depending on the software.

On November 1, 2026, clocks run 1:58, 1:59, then drop back to 1:00. The hour from 1:00 to 1:59 happens twice — first in daylight time, then again in standard time. "1:30 a.m. on November 1" is ambiguous unless you attach a UTC offset to it.

Because each zone switches at its own local 2 a.m., there's one strange hour in each direction every year. In March, New York changes before Chicago, so for one hour they sit two hours apart instead of one. In November the reverse happens: for one hour, New York and Chicago show the exact same time.

How DST Moves Each Zone's UTC Offset

Between March 8 and November 1, 2026, every US zone that observes DST sits one hour closer to UTC:

Note what does not change: the gaps between US zones. Every zone shifts by the same hour on the same night, so Eastern stays one hour ahead of Central all year — a 3 p.m. call in New York is 2 p.m. in Chicago in January and July alike. Our EST to CST converter handles the daylight variants automatically, and esttopst.com does the same for the three-hour Eastern–Pacific gap.

What does change is anything anchored to UTC: server logs, schedules published in UTC, international calls. A 15:00 UTC call is 10 a.m. in New York in winter and 11 a.m. in summer — utc-est.com covers that conversion in both directions.

Where Clocks Never Change

Two states and all five inhabited US territories stay on standard time year-round:

• Hawaii — HST, UTC-10, all year.
• Arizona — MST, UTC-7, all year, with one exception: the Navajo Nation, which stretches into Utah and New Mexico, does observe DST. The Hopi reservation, which sits inside the Navajo Nation, does not — a DST donut hole you can drive through in an afternoon.
• Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa — none observe DST.

The practical effect for Arizona: Phoenix matches Denver in winter and Los Angeles in summer, since MST (UTC-7) is the same offset as PDT (UTC-7). If your meetings involve Phoenix, the "time difference" changes twice a year even though Phoenix itself never moves.

The Weeks the US and Europe Disagree

The EU changes clocks on different Sundays — the last Sunday of March and the last Sunday of October, at 1:00 UTC across all member states at once. The UK, though no longer an EU member, keeps the same schedule. In 2026 that means March 29 and October 25. The result is two mismatch windows every year:

During both windows the usual New York–London gap shrinks from five hours to four, and Chicago–Paris from seven to six. A recurring transatlantic call lands an hour off for one side during these stretches — three weeks of it in spring, one week in fall. If the call matters, pin it to UTC or to one city, not to "the usual gap."

Who Set These Dates, and Whether They'll Change

The Uniform Time Act of 1966 created a single national DST schedule; before it, cities and states changed clocks whenever they liked, and some didn't bother. The current dates come from the Energy Policy Act of 2005, in effect since 2007, which stretched DST about a month past the old April–October schedule. NIST maintains the official summary.

Under current law, a state may opt out of DST entirely — Arizona and Hawaii did — but cannot adopt permanent daylight time without an act of Congress. Bills to lock the clocks, most prominently the Sunshine Protection Act, keep getting introduced; one passed the Senate in 2022 and then died in the House. As of mid-2026, nothing has become law, and the March/November schedule above stands.

What to Do the Weekend of the Change

Phones, computers, and anything that syncs time over the internet update themselves — they read the same IANA database the dates above were checked against. Ovens, microwaves, cars, and wall clocks don't; the Sunday-morning walk-around is still on you.

Two scheduling rules: don't set anything for 2:00–2:59 a.m. on March 8, because those times don't exist, and don't treat 1:30 a.m. on November 1 as a single moment, because it happens twice. Schedule around the window, or pin the event to UTC.

Sleep-wise, March is the harsh one — the Monday after spring forward is reliably rough. The standard advice is to move bedtime 15–20 minutes earlier for a few nights beforehand, so the lost hour doesn't land all at once. The November change mostly takes care of itself.

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