Tick-tock, tick-tock! After the March switch to daylight saving time, the move to winter time is coming up. Concretely, at the end of October, we’ll gain an extra hour of sleep.
Thus, in the night of Saturday, 24 to Sunday, 25 October 2026, at three o'clock in the morning, it will actually be two o'clock. We will therefore turn the clock hands back by sixty minutes. Good news: your smartphone and other computers will handle this update automatically.
A move that may catch many off guard and raises some important questions: in 2019, Members of the European Union voted in favor of abolishing the time change across all EU countries. At the time, it was implied that each seasonal clock change—spring or fall—could be the last. But what’s the real situation now?
Recall: in September 2018, the European Commission proposed to permanently suspend the biannual time change starting in 2021, following a vote in which 84% of Europeans supported ending the practice. The Commission left the final decision up to each member state on whether to keep summer or winter time. In France, summer time retention was favored by over 59%. Member states were due to finalize their decisions by April 1, 2020. However, due to the Covid-19 crisis, the issue remains unresolved, and the planned end of the time change—initially scheduled for 2021—has been put on indefinite hold. The end of the time change was then postponed, mainly due to the Covid-19 health crisis. This measure is no longer on the agenda, reads the public service website.
For the issue of time changes to be finally addressed and resolved, all European Union countries need to harmonize their choice of legal time, in order to avoid excessively restrictive time differences. For the 27 to reach agreement, lengthy discussions must take place... all the more so as some southern countries do not agree with putting an end to these time changes. France will therefore continue to switch from winter to summer time every six months.
We remind readers that standard time will remain the official time in France until March 28, 2027, when daylight saving time will once again take effect.
For the record, the time change in France was introduced following the oil crisis of 1973-1974. The initial aim was to align the hours of activity with the hours of sunshine, in order to limit the use of artificial lighting. Then, in 1998, the European Union decided to harmonize the time change dates between the various member countries.
