Daylight saving time is still making headlines. In the night from Saturday, October 24 to Sunday, October 25, 2026, Paris and the entire Île-de-France region will set their clocks back to return to winter time. And as every autumn, a question crops up in conversations, from the coffee machine to the terraces of the Marais: the abolition of daylight saving time, approved by EU lawmakers seven years ago, will it finally become a reality?
To answer that, you have to trace the thread of a European dossier that looks a bit like a stopped clock. The hands seem ready to move, but the mechanism remains jammed.
Daylight saving time ends on the last Sunday of October, in line with EuropeanDirective 2000/84/EC, as noted by Service Public. At 3 a.m., clocks go back to 2 a.m., giving us an extra hour of sleep.
This year, the calendar plays a little trick. With October 31st landing on a Saturday, the last Sunday of the month falls on the 25th—the earliest possible date. It’s a scenario we haven’t seen since 2020 and won’t see again until 2037, as noted by Selectra. Another calendar detail: the time change occurs right in the middle of the autumn break. To understand this calendar quirk in detail, we explain everything in our article winter time change 2026: why the date is even earlier this year?
Everything starts in 2018. The European Commission launched a public consultation that drew 4.6 million responses, 84% of them in favor of ending the regime. In the wake of that momentum, it unveiled a draft directive to put an end to seasonal daylight-saving time changes.
On March 26, 2019, the European Parliament adopted the text by 410 votes to 192. MEPs, however, pushed the deadline back to 2021 and left it up to each member state to decide between permanent daylight saving time or permanent standard time.
That’s where the snag hits. To take effect, the text must also be approved by the Council of the European Union, where governments sit. Yet the member states can’t reach an agreement. Some want to keep daylight saving time, others prefer standard time, and many fear a patchwork of schedules across neighboring countries. Imagine a Paris–Brussels journey with a time-zone difference at the border: transport, trade, and cross-border workers would all feel the impact. The 2020 health crisis relegated the issue to the bottom drawer.
The issue comes back into focus on October 20, 2025. That day, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez unveils, at an Energy and Transport Council gathering in Luxembourg, a proposal to scrap the daylight saving time from 2026 onward. According to L'EnerGeek, European Commissioner for Energy Dan Jørgensen argued that ending the biannual clock changes is the most logical path forward.
Finland and Poland back the initiative, and the European Commission has reinserted the issue into its 2026 work program. But with no majority in the Council, concrete movement is still elusive. The 2000 directive remains in force and the 2026 timetable stands. Even with a rapid agreement, the final switch would not occur before 2027, or even 2028, as each country finds its moment and gets its bearings.
In France, public opinion seems pretty clear. In the 2019 consultation launched by the National Assembly, around 84% of participants favored ending the clock change, and about 59% backed a permanent daylight saving time. The prospect of long, bright evenings along the Seine has real appeal.
Chronobiologists, for their part, lean toward winter time. The City of Paris reminds us that France already lives about an hour ahead of the sun in winter and two hours ahead in summer. Keeping daylight saving time year-round would mean winter mornings spent in the dark long after people head to work or school. The issue remains a topic of debate in the National Assembly, where MPs regularly question the government, as in this written question on the health effects of the clock change.
To give you a clearer sense of the two scenarios in the capital, our article Daylight saving time: summer or winter, what would Paris choose? explores the advantages and drawbacks of each option in daily life.
Outside the European Union, several countries have already moved on, including Iceland, Turkey, and Egypt. More recently, in March 2026, British Columbia in Canada announced it would ditch the seasonal clock change to remain on daylight saving time year-round, as explained by Time Out Montréal. These examples prove it’s technically possible, provided a country makes the unilateral decision, something European nations are reluctant to do for fear of misalignment with their neighbors.
Meanwhile, the ritual stays the same for us. Smartphones and computers will update automatically overnight from October 24 to 25, 2026, but don’t forget the oven, the microwave, the car, or the old clock in the living room. To find the dates of the next time changes and all the practical answers, our guide Time change 2026, when do we switch to winter time? remains just a click away. The end of daylight saving time isn’t buried, but it’s still not here.
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Dates and Opening Time
From October 24, 2026 to October 25, 2026
