Clocks go back November 1: is permanent daylight time law yet?

Clocks in most of the United States go back one hour at 2 a.m. on Sunday, November 1, 2026, and the bill that would end the switch is stuck in the Senate. The House passed the Sunshine Protection Act 308 to 117 in July.

Quick answer: No. Permanent daylight saving time is not law. The House approved the Sunshine Protection Act (H.R. 139) in July 2026, but the Senate has not acted, so US clocks fall back from 2 a.m. to 1 a.m. on November 1. The UK and EU already changed on October 25.

Americans get one more winter on standard time, and anyone working across the Atlantic gets a confusing week. Since the UK and the European Union moved their clocks on October 25, New York has been four hours behind London instead of the usual five. The normal gap returns on Sunday.

For readers in Lagos, Karachi, Mumbai or Manila who join calls with New York, the shift that matters is November 1, not October 25. Those countries do not change their clocks at all, so every US meeting moves one hour later on their side from next week.

When exactly do the clocks go back?

The US change happens at 2 a.m. local time, when clocks return to 1 a.m. Because each time zone switches at its own 2 a.m., the change rolls across the country over several hours. New York switches at 06:00 GMT, Chicago at 07:00 GMT, Denver at 08:00 GMT and Los Angeles at 09:00 GMT.

Phones, laptops and most connected devices update on their own. Oven clocks, car dashboards and older wall clocks do not.

Britain changed a week earlier. Under UK rules, clocks go back at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday of October, which this year was October 25, when British Summer Time ended and the country returned to Greenwich Mean Time. EU countries switch at the same moment, 01:00 GMT, so Paris and Berlin went back at 3 a.m. local time and Madrid did the same.

The US springs forward again on Sunday, March 14, 2027. The UK follows on March 28, 2027, according to the UK government.

Who does not change their clocks?

Federal law, the Uniform Time Act of 1966, lets a state stay on standard time all year. It does not let a state stay on daylight time all year. That is why the permanent daylight time laws that dozens of state legislatures have debated cannot take effect without Congress. The Philadelphia Inquirer counted 19 states that have passed such measures.

These places stay on standard time and will not touch their clocks on November 1:

• Hawaii, all year.
• Most of Arizona. The exception is the Navajo Nation, which does observe daylight saving time across its land in Arizona and neighboring states.
• US territories: Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa.

Why is New York only four hours behind London this week?

New York runs on Eastern Daylight Time (GMT minus 4) until 2 a.m. on November 1, then Eastern Standard Time (GMT minus 5). London runs on British Summer Time (GMT plus 1) until October 25, then GMT itself.

For one week each autumn, London is on winter time while New York is still on summer time. The gap shrinks from five hours to four. The same mismatch happens in spring, for about two to three weeks in March, because the US changes on the second Sunday of March and Europe on the last.

India, Pakistan, the Philippines and Nigeria use no daylight saving time. Their offsets stay fixed all year: India GMT plus 5:30, Pakistan GMT plus 5, the Philippines GMT plus 8 and Nigeria GMT plus 1. Every shift they notice comes from the other side of the call.

When it is 9 a.m. in New York	Until Oct 24	Oct 25 to Oct 31	From Nov 1
London	2 p.m.	1 p.m.	2 p.m.
Lagos	2 p.m.	2 p.m.	3 p.m.
Karachi	6 p.m.	6 p.m.	7 p.m.
Mumbai, New Delhi	6:30 p.m.	6:30 p.m.	7:30 p.m.
Manila	9 p.m.	9 p.m.	10 p.m.

Source: Daily Summit calculation from time zone rules published by timeanddate.com and the UK government, October 2026.

The table shows the catch. A team in Manila that meets New York at 9 a.m. Eastern now finishes at 10 p.m. local time, an hour later than all summer. A Lagos office that dials into a London call at 9 a.m. GMT also saw its slot move, from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. local time, on October 25.

What to do this week

1. Check the anchor city. If the invite was set in New York time, it moves for you on November 1. If it was set in London or Paris time, it already moved on October 25.
2. Trust the calendar, then confirm. Google Calendar and Outlook adjust events created in a named time zone. A time typed into an email or chat message does not adjust.
3. Re-read recurring invites. A standing call created as “1 p.m. London” lands at a different hour in Mumbai or Manila after each change in the UK or the US.

What would the Sunshine Protection Act change?

The bill, sponsored by Representative Vern Buchanan, a Florida Republican, would make daylight saving time permanent across the country and end the twice-yearly switch. States could still choose year-round standard time instead, as Hawaii and Arizona do now.

The House vote on July 14 crossed party lines. According to the House clerk’s roll call, 193 Republicans, 114 Democrats and one independent voted yes, while 22 Republicans and 95 Democrats voted no. President Donald Trump backs the bill, and the White House called it “a popular, common-sense reform” in a statement before the vote, as reported by Good Morning America.

The Senate is a different story. The bill was sent to a Senate committee and has not moved, according to Fox News and the Philadelphia Inquirer. In October 2025, Senators Rick Scott, Sheldon Whitehouse and Tommy Tuberville tried to pass a Senate version by unanimous consent, a fast-track procedure that any one senator can block. Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, objected.

On October 3, 2026, Trump used Truth Social to urge Arkansas voters to phone Cotton, posted the senator’s number, and wrote that blocking a bill in the Senate “only takes one.” Cotton answered on X that no one likes changing the clock, but that “Arkansans don’t want their kids going to school in the pitch dark.”

The Senate is in recess until the November 3 midterm elections, according to Fox News, so no vote can happen before the clocks change. The Senate did pass a version once, by unanimous consent in March 2022, but the House never took it up and the bill died at the end of that Congress.

America tried permanent daylight time once

Cotton’s argument rests on history. In December 1973, during the Arab oil embargo, Congress passed an emergency law putting the country on daylight time all year as a two-year trial meant to save energy. President Richard Nixon signed it.

• January 6, 1974: Clocks spring forward in midwinter and stay there.
• February 1974: Support for the change has fallen to about 42%, from about 79% at the start, according to polls from the time cited by Audacy.
• October 5, 1974: President Gerald Ford signs H.R. 16102, returning the country to standard time for the winter, according to a White House notice held by the Ford Presidential Library.
• October 27, 1974: Standard time returns, less than 10 months into the trial.
• February 23, 1975: Daylight time resumes under the amended law, according to the same White House notice.

The complaints were about dark winter mornings, with children walking to school before sunrise. Accounts of how many accidents the change caused differ, and some widely repeated figures are hard to trace to official records.

Why sleep doctors want the opposite

The main US body for sleep doctors wants to end the switch too, but by keeping standard time, the setting the US uses in winter, all year round.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine set out that position in a 2020 statement and repeated it in an updated paper in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, titled “Permanent standard time is the optimal choice for health and safety.” The academy argues that standard time better matches the body’s internal clock, because morning light is what keeps that clock on schedule. Permanent daylight time would leave much of the country waking in darkness for months.

“Permanent, year-round standard time is the best choice to most closely match our circadian sleep-wake cycle,” Dr. M. Adeel Rishi, the statement’s lead author, said when the academy released it.

The academy also links the spring switch to short-term harm, including more car crashes and heart problems in the days after clocks go forward, and pointed to a survey it ran in which 63% of US adults supported ending seasonal changes. Supporters of the Sunshine Protection Act stress a different benefit: brighter evenings. Representative Brett Guthrie, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said on the House floor that the bill “shifts one hour of sunlight from the beginning to the end of the day in the winter.”

Both sides agree on ending the switch. They disagree on which hour to keep, and that split has helped stall the bill for years. Our explainer on how much sleep adults need covers the official guidance on sleep itself.

Why Europe’s plan to stop changing clocks stalled

The European Union came closer than the US, then stopped. In 2018 the European Commission ran a public consultation that drew 4.6 million responses, 84% of them in favor of ending the changes. On September 12, 2018, it proposed scrapping them and letting each country pick permanent summer or winter time.

The European Parliament backed the plan on March 26, 2019, by 410 votes to 192, with 51 abstentions. The Council, where national governments sit, has never agreed a position. Parliament’s own tracker lists the file as “blocked” by the Council. Ministers asked in December 2018 for an impact assessment first, and governments have worried about a patchwork of time zones if neighbors made different choices.

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, pushed in October 2025 to end the changes from 2026, with support from Finland and Poland. It did not happen in time. Clocks across the EU went back as usual on October 25, 2026, and an Italian lawmaker, Andrea Barabotti, has since called for the talks to restart with permanent summer time as the goal.

What to watch after November 1

Watch for: The Senate returns after the November 3 midterms. If the objection stands and the bill gets no floor vote before the new Congress starts in January 2027, the House-passed bill dies and the process starts again. Until then, plan for the next US change on March 14, 2027, and the next UK and EU change on March 28, 2027.

Any future version still faces the same choice that split doctors and lawmakers this year: an extra hour of light in winter evenings, or in winter mornings. A news report that says Congress “ended daylight saving time” has to be read carefully, because it could mean either one.