Europe's Clocks Go Back One Hour on Sunday: Summer Time Ends and Winter Time Returns
Following tradition, clocks across Europe will be turned back again on the last Sunday of October. On the night of 24 to 25 October 2026, the time will move back from 3am to 2am, giving everyone who does not work nights an extra hour of sleep.
The change marks the end of Central European Summer Time (CEST). Most of Europe returns to Central European Time (CET), commonly known as winter time. From then on, daylight will come earlier in the morning and darkness will fall earlier in the evening.
Portugal and the United Kingdom also change their clocks at the same time, although both countries remain one hour behind most of mainland Europe, as before.
Similar changes are coming outside Europe as well. Daylight Saving Time ends in the United States on 1 November. By contrast, according to the travel portal ReiseReporter, countries such as Morocco, Thailand, Japan, Argentina and South Africa do not change their clocks at all.
Summer time has a history stretching back decades. In 1980, West Germany and other EU countries followed France's lead to coordinate time. The government in Paris had introduced summer time in 1976 in response to the energy crisis, aiming to save fuel.
That original reasoning is now widely considered outdated, and many no longer find the practice as useful as it once seemed. The leap second has also recently been abolished, seen as another step towards simplifying timekeeping.
Changing the clocks twice a year has long been unpopular across Europe. In an EU-wide consultation in 2018, 84 percent of participants said they wanted the seasonal clock change to end, underlining widespread frustration with the practice.
Under public pressure, the European Parliament backed the European Commission's proposal by a large majority the following year. In 2019, MEPs voted 410 to 192 to abolish the clock change, which was originally due to take effect from 2021.
Yet several years on, Europeans are still moving their clocks forward in spring and back in autumn. The proposal is stuck because EU member states cannot agree on how the change should be implemented, and without their approval the final law remains blocked.
The biggest disagreement is over which permanent time to adopt: countries have still not agreed whether summer time or winter time should apply all year. Implementation has been suspended until a joint solution is found, amid concerns that differing systems could cause economic and organisational problems. The Covid-19 pandemic and Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine also pushed the issue down the political agenda.
As a result, the system is considered unlikely to be abolished in the near future. For now, Europe enters another winter season with Sunday night's one-hour step back, and the clocks will move forward again next spring.
