News & Trends / United Kingdom & United States · Time changes
UK Clocks Go Back October 25: Check Your U.S. Meeting Times
UK clocks go back on Sunday, October 25, 2026. Much of the United States makes its corresponding change on November 1. For one week, a London meeting with a New York team can land an hour earlier on the British clock than usual.
Northern Ireland’s government issued its reminder on October 23: British Summer Time ends this weekend. The date is routine, but the mismatch across the Atlantic is easy to miss in a recurring invitation or a time written into an email.
When UK clocks go back in 2026
GOV.UK’s clock-change calendar gives the date as October 25. At 2 a.m. British Summer Time, the clock returns to 1 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time. The hour labeled 1 a.m. happens twice, first in BST and then in GMT.
The change moves the UK from one hour ahead of UTC to the same clock reading as UTC. It does not add daylight to the day; it changes how the available daylight is labeled by the clock. The UK uses the last Sunday in October for this autumn transition.
For an event in the repeated hour, “1:30 a.m. in London” is incomplete. In 2026, 1:30 a.m. BST corresponds to 00:30 UTC, while 1:30 a.m. GMT corresponds to 01:30 UTC. Adding the date, time zone and offset resolves the ambiguity. These conversions follow directly from BST being UTC+1 and GMT being UTC+0.
The United States changes a week later
The National Institute of Standards and Technology lists November 1 at 2 a.m. local time as the 2026 US daylight-saving end. In places observing that rule, the clock then moves back to 1 a.m. local standard time.
That means a meeting kept at 9 a.m. New York time does not stay at the same London clock time across the two changes. New York remains on UTC−4 after the UK has moved to UTC+0. When New York switches to UTC−5 on November 1, the usual five-hour difference returns.
| Example meeting date | New York | London |
|---|---|---|
| Friday, October 23 | 9 a.m. EDT | 2 p.m. BST |
| Monday, October 26 | 9 a.m. EDT | 1 p.m. GMT |
| Monday, November 2 | 9 a.m. EST | 2 p.m. GMT |
These examples hold the meeting at 9 a.m. in New York. A meeting anchored to London time would instead move on the New York clock. The table is a conversion, not a forecast of how any particular calendar app will handle an existing invitation.
Why “U.S. time” is not specific enough
The United States has multiple time zones and daylight-saving exceptions. NIST’s local-time FAQ notes that Hawaii and most of Arizona do not observe daylight saving time; the Navajo Nation does. A New York conversion should not be reused for Phoenix or Honolulu.
Use named locations or time zones rather than a country label. “Monday, October 26, 9 a.m. America/New_York” carries more information than “Monday morning U.S. time.” For an international attendee, including the corresponding London time makes the intended appointment easier to verify.
This matters especially when a meeting’s hour is written manually into a message. A calendar invitation can contain a named time zone, while an accompanying sentence may reflect an old offset. Check which one the organizer intends before moving the appointment. Avoid creating a second, conflicting invitation just to correct the text.
Which clocks need attention
The Royal Observatory Greenwich’s guide says most internet-connected devices should update automatically. Some kitchen, car and wristwatch clocks may not. The government reminder also points to household timers, including central heating and hot water, as equipment worth checking.
The useful check is whether a device’s automatic time and time-zone settings are configured correctly. If it has already updated itself, manually moving it back again would make it wrong. For a manual clock, the autumn direction is back one hour. For a calendar, verify the location and offset rather than editing every meeting by hand.
Travel needs its own confirmation. Keep the local date and time shown by the operator with the booking, and recheck the current service information if an overnight journey crosses the transition. The repeated hour is a reason to clarify an ambiguous itinerary; it is not evidence that a flight or train is delayed.
A quick cross-border diary check
Look first at commitments from October 25 through October 31 involving places that change later. Mark the city that anchors each meeting. Then inspect the first meeting after November 1 as well, when the New York–London gap changes again. One sample on either side is often more revealing than assuming an entire recurring series is wrong.
The same habit helps when delegating scheduling to an assistant: give it the date, the named time zone and whose local hour should remain fixed. Our Claude Duet explainer covers a new agent that can prepare work across connected apps; our AI fact-checking guide explains why conversions should still be checked.
Try our London to New York time converter to check a dated meeting in either direction, including repeated or skipped local hours.
Sources and method
UK dates were checked against GOV.UK, the October 23 nidirect notice and Royal Observatory Greenwich. US rules were checked against NIST. The meeting table and repeated-hour examples are original conversions for London and New York, independently reproduced using time-zone data. Checked October 24, 2026; local exceptions are not covered by the New York examples.
Prepared with AI assistance; dates and calculations were checked against the linked material.
