The clocks go back on 25 October 2026: use the extra hour to fix your bedtime

When exactly do the clocks change?

• France, Belgium and the rest of the EU: in the night of Saturday 24 to Sunday 25 October 2026. At 03:00, clocks go back to 02:00.
• UK: the same night, at 02:00 BST, clocks go back to 01:00 GMT. It's the same moment as on the continent.
• US: Sunday 1 November 2026, at 02:00 local time, clocks go back to 01:00. Most of Arizona and Hawaii don't change. Canada mostly changes the same day.

25 October is the earliest date the European change can fall on. It last happened in 2020 and won't again until 2037, so many articles still show last year's dates. For one week, until the US catches up, Europe and North America are an hour closer than usual.

Will this be the last time? Probably not soon. The EU Parliament voted in 2019 to stop changing the clocks, but the file has been blocked in the Council since 2020. In March 2026 the European Commission said it was studying the question again, with results expected by the end of 2026.

Do we really get an extra hour of sleep?

Partly, and only once. A UK Biobank study that measured sleep with wrist sensors found people slept about 33 minutes more on the Sunday of the autumn change, but only about 3 extra minutes a night in the week after. An earlier review found little sign that people actually use the full "extra hour" to sleep, partly because many wake earlier in the days that follow. The autumn change is much gentler than the spring one, which cost about an hour of sleep in the same study, and most people adjust within a day to a week.

So the hour isn't the prize. The prize is the reset.

The reset: keep your body's rhythm, move the clock

Say you usually fall asleep at 00:30. After the change, that same moment reads 23:30 on the clock. If you simply keep sleeping when your body is tired, your bedtime looks an hour earlier overnight, with no willpower involved. The trick is to lock it in before the old habit comes back.

1. Pick your new bedtime and wake time now, by the new clock. For example: lights out 23:30, up at 07:00, every day, weekends included. A consistent wake time is what keeps a bedtime in place.
2. Get daylight in the morning. Morning light is what sets your body clock, which matters more as the mornings get darker.
3. Start your screen curfew an hour before bed. France's sleep institute (INSV) recommends avoiding bright screens for the hour before sleep and talks about a "digital curfew". With a 23:30 bedtime, that's 22:30.
4. Move the phone out of the bedroom. Charge it in the kitchen or the hall and use a cheap alarm clock. It's the single simplest change for scrolling in bed.
5. Watch the first weekend. The night of the change is when "I've got an extra hour" turns into an hour of scrolling. Decide in advance what the extra hour is for: sleep.

Some sleep experts give the opposite advice: go to bed about 20 minutes later on the Thursday and Friday before, so your usual clock times don't move. That aims to keep your habits unchanged. If your goal is to go to bed earlier, the reset above uses the change instead of cancelling it out.

Make it stick when the evenings get darker

A new bedtime is easy to set and easy to lose, usually to "one more video". What helps is anything that puts effort between you and the feed at night:

• Built-in tools such as Android's Focus mode or Bedtime mode (see how to lock apps at night on Android). Free, but one tap switches them off.
• Night Bandit, which we make, locks your feed apps at the bedtime you choose. To get back in, you walk to your kettle and scan it, and each walk buys less time. Set your curfew to the new 23:30 the weekend the clocks change, and let the walk do the arguing.