When Do The Clocks Go Back And Why?

The clocks go back at 2 am on Sunday, 25 October 2026, which turns 2 am into 1 am and hands the country an hour it didn’t have the day before. Mornings get lighter, evenings get darker, and the usual debate starts up about whether we should still be doing it.

So why do we do it at all? The answer is older than you might think, and the extra hour in bed is more of a myth than most people realise.

The clocks go back because British Summer Time comes to an end. GOV.UK describes BST as the period when the clocks are one hour ahead, and when that period finishes in October, the UK goes back to Greenwich Mean Time, which is our standard time all winter.

The more interesting question is why we move them forward in the first place. Changing the clocks doesn’t create daylight. It just shifts where the daylight sits in your day, giving lighter evenings in summer at the cost of darker mornings.

Come late October, there isn’t enough daylight left to go round. Keeping BST through winter would push sunrise past 9 am in much of the country by midwinter, and even later in the north of Scotland. Going back to GMT moves that hour, when more people can use it, to the start of the day rather than the end.

Always on the last Sunday in October, at 2 am.

• 2026: The clocks go back on Sunday, 25 October.
• 2027: The clocks go back on Sunday 31 October, and forward again on Sunday 28 March.

In spring, the clocks go forward an hour at 1 am on the last Sunday in March. Our guide to when the clocks go forward covers that end of the year.

The timing is deliberate. 2 am on a Sunday is about as quiet as the country gets, so the fewest people are affected by an hour appearing or disappearing. It also means the date never falls in the middle of a working week.

People have been arguing about that for most of the past century, and the argument is still going.

Those in favour of scrapping it point to the twice-yearly disruption and the evenings lost in winter, when it’s dark by teatime. Those against changing anything point north. Keeping lighter evenings all year would mean very late sunrises in the north of Scotland, with children travelling to school in the dark all winter.

Two serious attempts have come and gone. The Daylight Saving Bill from 2010 to 2012 proposed lighter evenings year-round, but didn’t make it through the Commons. In March 2019, the European Parliament voted to scrap the switch across the EU, and that legislation has been stuck ever since. For now, the clocks keep changing.

A review published in Sleep Medicine Reviews looked at what actually happens to our sleep around the clock changes. On the night the clocks go back, it found little evidence that people sleep any longer than usual. Over the five days that follow, with wake times effectively an hour earlier, the net result is a loss of sleep for the week.

In other words, the hour is handed to you, and most of us spend it on something other than sleeping. The same review points to indirect evidence of higher traffic accident rates around both clock changes, which is worth remembering on the Monday morning after.

None of which is a reason to dread it. Go to bed at your usual time rather than treating the extra hour as a late pass, and you’ll actually collect it.

An hour is a small shift, and your body clock still notices. It runs on light, so when the evenings suddenly go dark an hour earlier, your body starts producing melatonin earlier too, and you may find yourself flagging at 9 pm for a few nights.

Brighter mornings work in your favour here. Morning light is the strongest signal your body clock has, so the same change that darkens your evenings helps you wake up.

The tiredness that lingers beyond that usually has other causes. In our 2026 UK Sleep Survey, nearly a third of people said they rarely or never wake up feeling refreshed, which no clock change will fix on its own. Our guide to circadian rhythms explains how the body clock works, and our podcast on whether winter affects our sleep covers the darker months more broadly.

• Shift gradually: Move bedtime 15 minutes later for the two or three nights before the change, so Sunday’s new time feels closer to normal.
• Get outside early: Daylight in the first hour or two after waking is what resets your body clock fastest, and it’s easier to come by now that the mornings are brighter.
• Keep your wake time steady: A consistent get-up time does more for your body clock than a consistent bedtime, weekends included. Our guide to resetting your body clock has more to offer.
• Resist the long lie-in: Sleeping in on Sunday feels like the obvious move, and it tends to make it harder to fall asleep on Sunday night.

If you want a hand working out when to turn in, our Sleep Cycle Calculator does the maths for you.