UK, Europe clocks go back today: India time gap shifts

At 2am in London on Sunday, the clocks went back to 1am. GOV.UK's calendar sets the change on the last Sunday of October each year, and it lists the next move forward on 28 March 2027. The hour between 1am and 2am happened twice overnight, and Britain is now on Greenwich Mean Time.

What changed, and where

| Place | Change on 25 October 2026 | Time after the change | | UK | 2am BST back to 1am GMT | GMT | | EU | 3am back to 2am local time in Paris and Berlin, at 1am UTC | Standard time | | US | No change yet | Daylight time until 1 November | | India | No change | IST, UTC+5:30, all year |

The EU switch happens at the same moment in every member state, 1am UTC on the last Sunday of October, under Directive 2000/84/EC. India does not move its clocks at any point in the year, so only the gap between India and other countries moves.

What it means for calls, meetings and flights

A meeting fixed at 9am London time was 1:30pm in India before the change. From today it is 2:30pm in India, and a 5pm London meeting is 10:30pm in India. The shift only applies if the organiser kept the meeting pinned to London time. If the meeting was pinned to an Indian time, the London time is the one that moved, so check which clock the invitation follows before the next call.

Flight and train bookings need the same check. A ticket shows local times at each end, and those local times now sit an hour differently against each other on routes between India and Europe. The London-New York gap also changes for one week: it narrows from five hours to four until the United States ends daylight saving on 1 November, when it goes back to five.

Why Europe still changes its clocks

The European Commission proposed in 2018 that each member state should choose between permanent summer time and permanent standard time. The European Parliament backed the idea in 2019, but the file has stayed stuck in the Council, where national governments have not agreed a common line. Spain took a fresh proposal to end the change to EU ministers in 2025, and no progress has followed. The EU has already published switch dates for 2027 to 2031, so the routine continues for now.

What happens next

The United States ends daylight saving at 2am local time on Sunday, 1 November 2026, which restores the usual five-hour London-New York gap. A Commission study on the clock-change options is due to close by the end of 2026, which will show whether the debate moves in the Council. The next change in the UK and the EU is on 28 March 2027, when clocks go forward again, and the US follows on 14 March 2027.

📷 Photo credit: Cindy Andrie, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

📷 फोटो: Cindy Andrie, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)