How many days until the clocks change?

What this countdown does

Daylight saving starts and ends on a weekday rule, not a fixed date, which is why nobody can ever remember when it is. This page applies the US rule — the second Sunday of March to spring forward and the first Sunday of November to fall back — finds whichever comes next from today, and rolls on automatically after each change.

How to use it

1. Open the page — the countdown is already running from today.
2. Read the days remaining and the exact date.
3. Check the weeks-and-days breakdown and the weekday it falls on.
4. Use Share to send the live countdown to anyone.

When it's useful

The obvious use is remembering to change the clocks that are not automatic: ovens, cars, wall clocks, and anything else that has no idea what day it is. The less obvious one is scheduling. If you run meetings or calls with Europe, the two regions do not switch on the same weekend, and for a few weeks each spring and autumn the usual time difference is an hour off what you expect.

The next changes

Under the US rule the clocks go forward on the second Sunday of March and back on the first Sunday of November, at 2 a.m. local time:

• 1 November 2026 — back one hour
• 14 March 2027 — forward one hour
• 7 November 2027 — back one hour
• 12 March 2028 — forward one hour
• 5 November 2028 — back one hour

Which way, and what it costs you

Spring forward, fall back. In March the clock jumps from 1:59 a.m. straight to 3 a.m., so that night is 23 hours long and you lose an hour of sleep. In November it goes from 1:59 a.m. back to 1 a.m., the night is 25 hours long, and you get the hour back. Because the change is set at 2 a.m. local time rather than at one moment worldwide, it rolls across the US time zones one after another rather than happening everywhere at once.

Where the rule does not apply

Not everyone in the country changes. Hawaii and most of Arizona stay on standard time all year, as do several US territories. If you are in one of those places, this countdown tells you when everyone else moves — which still matters for flights, broadcasts, and calls, since your offset to the rest of the country changes twice a year even though your own clock does not.

The gap with Europe

Europe switches on different weekends — the last Sunday of March and the last Sunday of October. The US springs forward first and falls back last, so there are two windows each year, a few weeks in March and about a week from late October, where the time difference across the Atlantic is one hour smaller than usual. That is the classic cause of a call being an hour out.

How the days are counted

The count is in whole calendar days from today to the date you pick, calculated in UTC so it never drifts with time zones or daylight saving. If the date has already passed, the count shows how many days ago it was.