What the 25 October switch changes — and what it does not
On the night of Saturday 24 to Sunday 25 October 2026, at 3am it will be 2am. It is the earliest date the rule allows: the European directive sets the change on the last Sunday of October, and because the 31st falls on a Saturday, the cut-off moves up to the 25th. The switch happens simultaneously across the Union, at 01:00 UTC.
Same day, different calendar: 25 October also opens the winter airline season, running through 27 March 2027. The FAA notice published in the Federal Register in June 2026 explicitly aligns the US season with that IATA period. The two events land together, and that is what makes itineraries hard to read.
One thing to hold on to before anything else: the times printed on your ticket are local times, and the clock change does not move them by a single minute. What moves is the arithmetic you do in your head: the gap between two cities, the margin you think you have for a connection, the hour at which you ask someone to pick you up.
The week transatlantic maths goes wrong
Europe turns its clocks back on 25 October. The United States and Canada wait until 1 November, at 2am local time. In between sit seven days during which the usual offset is simply not the right one.
Paris–New York: five hours instead of six
From 25 October to 1 November, Paris is on UTC+1 while New York is still on UTC−4: the gap drops to five hours, not the six everyone carries in their head. London–New York goes from five hours to four over the same window. Nothing is off on the airline side — schedules were built with that offset — but every calculation made by hand is exposed.
The risk sits with separate tickets
On a single ticket, the connection margin was validated by the carrier against the airport's minimum connecting time — the MCT whose third 2026 edition IATA publishes for more than 400 airports, covering roughly 83% of world connections. There is nothing for you to recompute, and if the connection breaks through the carrier's own doing, re-routing is on them. On two separate bookings, the judgement call is yours: a margin estimated from memory can be wrong by exactly one hour, and a second ticket you fail to show up for is usually lost.
Countries that never change their clocks: the gap still moves
Morocco: September's decree reshuffled everything
This is the autumn's most concrete piece of news for anyone flying to the Maghreb. Decree no. 2.26.530 ended the permanent GMT+1 regime introduced in 2018: on 20 September 2026 at 2am, the kingdom returned to GMT, and the exception that applied during Ramadan goes with that regime. The arithmetic follows: between 20 September and 25 October, the Paris–Marrakech gap is two hours; from 25 October it falls back to one. Eight years of habit no longer hold.
Türkiye and Australia: two opposite directions
Türkiye has stayed on UTC+3 all year round since 2016, which does not make the offset stable: it moves from one hour to two with France on 25 October. In the southern hemisphere the shifts compound — Sydney went onto summer time on 4 October, taking the gap with Paris to nine hours, then to ten on 25 October. Algeria and Tunisia, for their part, hold a fixed zone all year.
Four checks to run on your itinerary
- Read the time, not the duration. The local departure and arrival times published by the airline are the only reference.
- Check the offset for the date of the flight. Not the offset on the day you book: the one that will apply on departure day, accounting for both change dates, 25 October and 1 November.
- Reopen your booking after 25 October. The season change is also when schedules get readjusted. A significant shift — often assessed at around two hours, or the addition of a connection — entitles you with most carriers to a free rebooking or a refund.
- Handle the ground leg separately. Train, shuttle, pre-booked parking: each operator manages the night of the switch its own way.
On the night of the 24th, the hour that happens twice
Between 2am and 3am, local clocks run through the same hour twice. Carriers generally avoid scheduling departures inside that window, but if your flight takes off during the night or lands just after, trust only the published schedule: an aircraft airborne at the moment of the switch shows an apparent duration one hour shorter without flying a minute less.
With a family, the extra hour is a resource
The night of 24 to 25 October lasts twenty-five hours. For an early Sunday or Monday departure, that is an hour of sleep handed back — probably the only moment of the year when a dawn flight costs a little less in tiredness. With young children, shifting meals and bedtime by fifteen to twenty minutes a day over the three or four days before smooths the transition better than an abrupt reset on Sunday morning. On a long-haul flight, the rule is unchanged: switch to arrival time from boarding, keep hydrated — cabin air is very dry and alcohol makes dehydration worse — and seek daylight on arrival.
The European file, still stalled
All of this was meant to disappear. In 2018 the Commission proposed, in document COM(2018) 639, repealing directive 2000/84/EC and ending seasonal clock changes. The European Parliament voted in favour in March 2019, by 410 votes to 192 with 51 abstentions. The text has been waiting for a Council position ever since, for want of agreement between member states on which time to keep. Spain revived the subject in autumn 2025, backed by Finland and Poland, but even a swift agreement would not take effect before 2027 or 2028. Until then: two switches a year, and a week of desynchronisation with North America every autumn.