The next daylight saving change falls on Sunday, November 1, 2026. Here's the live count:
On this night the clocks fall back one hour — you gain an hour of sleep.
As of October 22, 2026, there are 10 days until the clocks fall back.
Counting down to something else? Build your own with the countdown timer, or browse all holiday countdowns.
In the United States, daylight saving time begins on the second Sunday of March, when clocks spring forward one hour at 2:00 a.m. local time — 2:00 becomes 3:00, and the night is an hour shorter. It ends on the first Sunday of November, when clocks fall back one hour at 2:00 a.m. — 2:00 becomes 1:00 again, and the night is an hour longer. This page always counts down to whichever change comes next and tells you which way the clocks are about to move: in spring you lose an hour of sleep, in fall you gain one. The dates have been set by federal law since the Uniform Time Act of 1966; the current March-to-November span dates from the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which stretched daylight saving time by about a month starting in 2007.
Phones, computers, and most connected devices update themselves overnight, so the clocks that actually need you are the manual ones: the oven and microwave, the car dashboard, wall clocks, and older alarm clocks. Fire departments have long used the two change weekends as a twice-a-year reminder to test smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors and swap in fresh batteries — alarms should be replaced entirely every ten years. The spring change is the rough one for sleep: shifting bedtime fifteen minutes earlier for a few nights beforehand softens the lost hour, for kids and pets as much as for adults. In fall, the extra hour is a gift, but the earlier sunset catches commuters out for the first week or so — worth remembering on the road at dusk.
Arizona (outside the Navajo Nation, which does observe it) and Hawaii don't change their clocks at all, and neither do Puerto Rico, Guam, and the other U.S. territories — they stay on standard time year-round. Calls to end the twice-yearly change are a fixture in Congress and statehouses; bills to make daylight saving time permanent have passed one chamber more than once, but as of 2026 none has become law, so the spring-forward/fall-back rhythm continues. If that ever changes, this page's rule changes with it.
Is it "daylight saving" or "daylight savings"? Saving — singular. The law and the dictionaries use "daylight saving time," though the plural is what most people say out loud.
When exactly does the time change? At 2:00 a.m. local time in each time zone, which is why the change sweeps across the country over several hours rather than all at once. In spring, the hour from 2:00 to 3:00 simply doesn't exist; in fall, the hour from 1:00 to 2:00 happens twice.
Why do we do this at all? The usual story credits wartime fuel saving — Germany adopted it in 1916 and the U.S. followed in 1918 — and Benjamin Franklin gets quoted for a satirical 1784 letter suggesting Parisians get up earlier to save candles. He was joking; the real reasons were coal, then energy policy, plus the genuine pleasure of a light evening in summer.
Because the rule never moves, the dates can be worked out years ahead. The clocks fall back on Sunday, November 1, 2026, spring forward on Sunday, March 14, 2027, fall back on Sunday, November 7, 2027, and spring forward again on Sunday, March 12, 2028. Every change happens at 2:00 a.m. local time on that Sunday. This page applies the federal rule to today's date and counts down to whichever change comes next, so it never needs updating by hand — the day after one change, it is already counting to the following one.
The spring change is the shock: an hour vanishes overnight, and Monday morning arrives an hour early by your body's reckoning. The standard advice works because it's gradual — move bedtime and wake time fifteen minutes earlier on each of the three or four nights beforehand, and the lost hour lands in installments instead of all at once. Morning daylight is the strongest signal for resetting your body clock, so get outside or open the curtains soon after waking in the days around the change. Young children and pets run on routine rather than clocks, and the same installment plan works for them: shift meals and walks by fifteen minutes a day. Fall is gentler — the extra hour is real sleep if you let it be. Resist staying up to spend it, keep your usual bedtime, and take the same morning-light advice; the body adjusts to standard time within a couple of days, and the earlier dusk is the main thing to plan around.
Do other countries change their clocks on the same dates? No, and the gap causes real confusion twice a year. Most of Europe changes on the last Sundays of March and October — a few weeks apart from the U.S. dates — so Europe fell back on October 25, 2026, a week before the United States, and springs forward on March 28, 2027, two weeks after. For those in-between weeks, the usual time difference between, say, New York and London is an hour smaller than normal. If you schedule calls across the Atlantic, the weeks between the two regions' change dates are when meetings quietly slide an hour.
I'm traveling on the change weekend — which time is my flight? Airlines publish departure and arrival times in the local time of each airport, and a flight leaving on Sunday morning uses the new time, because the change happens at 2:00 a.m. before it departs. Your phone will update itself overnight, so the practical move is simply to trust the airline app on the day and be skeptical of any printed itinerary or hotel alarm clock that still shows the old time.
Daylight Saving Time: Why We Fall Back covers where the clock change came from, who skips it entirely, and a practical checklist for the weekend the clocks move.