Daylight saving time 2026–2027: dates and how they affect your meetings
Daylight saving time (DST) is the main reason a meeting that worked for months suddenly has someone missing. The problem is not the change itself; it is that different regions change on different dates, and some do not change at all. Here are the dates that matter for 2026 and 2027.
Clock-change dates by region
| Region | 2026 | 2027 |
|---|---|---|
| United States and Canada (most areas) | Starts Sunday, March 8 · Ends Sunday, November 1 | Starts Sunday, March 14 · Ends Sunday, November 7 |
| European Union and United Kingdom | Starts Sunday, March 29 · Ends Sunday, October 25 | Starts Sunday, March 28 · Ends Sunday, October 31 |
| Mexico (except some border cities) | No daylight saving time since October 2022 | |
| Chile (mainland) | Summer time from early September to early April (southern hemisphere) | |
| Australia (Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Hobart) | Summer time from the first Sunday of October to the first Sunday of April | |
| Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Panama, Central America | No daylight saving time | |
| Japan, China, India, Singapore, UAE | No daylight saving time | |
In the US the change happens at 2:00 AM local time; in Europe it happens at 01:00 UTC, which means every European country changes at the same instant. Arizona (except the Navajo Nation), Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands stay on standard time all year.
The mismatch weeks
Because the US and Europe change on different Sundays, there are a few weeks each year when the usual gap between them is one hour smaller:
- Spring 2026: March 8 to March 28. New York to London is 4 hours instead of 5; Miami to Madrid is 5 hours instead of 6.
- Fall 2026: October 25 to October 31. Same effect: the gap is one hour smaller than usual.
- Spring 2027: March 14 to March 27.
- Fall 2027: October 31 to November 6.
If you have a recurring call between the Americas and Europe, these are the weeks when someone will be an hour early or late. Calendar apps handle it correctly as long as the event was created in a real time zone (for example "America/New_York"), but anyone who memorized "London is five hours ahead" will get it wrong.
What changes for Latin America
Most of Latin America does not observe DST, so the difference with the US moves twice a year:
- Bogotá, Lima, Quito and Panama City (UTC−5): same time as New York and Miami in winter; one hour behind them from March to November.
- Mexico City (UTC−6): same time as Chicago and Houston in winter; one hour behind them in summer. It is two hours behind New York in summer and one hour behind in winter.
- Caracas, Santo Domingo and San Juan (UTC−4): one hour ahead of Miami in winter; the same time in summer.
- Buenos Aires and São Paulo (UTC−3): two hours ahead of New York in winter, one hour ahead in summer.
With Europe the change is even larger: Bogotá is 6 hours behind Madrid during the European winter and 7 hours behind during the European summer.
Southern hemisphere: the opposite direction
Chile and southeastern Australia move their clocks forward when the northern hemisphere moves them back. Between October and March the gap between New York and Sydney can be 15 or 16 hours, and between April and September 14 hours. Santiago de Chile has the same time as New York from about April to early September, is one hour ahead in September, October and March, and two hours ahead from November to early March. Always check the specific date.
How to protect your meetings
- Create events in a city time zone, never as a fixed UTC offset.
- Put a reminder in your own calendar for the Mondays after March 8, March 29, October 25 and November 1, 2026, to double-check recurring international meetings.
- Write each city's time in the invite text, so people who read it on a phone see the correct time without converting.
- Use a planner that calculates by date. World Meeting Sync uses the IANA time zone database, the same source used by operating systems, so the times shown are correct for the day you pick.