France will switch to winter time on the night of Saturday, October 24 to Sunday, October 25, 2026, when clocks are turned back one hour. At 3 a.m., it will actually be 2 a.m., giving people in France one extra hour of sleep.
The change is automatic for most devices. Smartphones and other computers will update on their own, but the clocks that matter for the official time still have to be set back 60 minutes by hand.
That date is drawing attention because the seasonal change was supposed to be on the way out years ago. In 2019, European Union deputies voted in favor of ending clock changes across member countries, after the European Commission proposed in September 2018 that the semiannual switch should stop in 2021. The Commission also said each country could choose whether to keep summer time or winter time permanently.
France never made that final choice. The preferred option there was summer time, with more than 59% in favor, but each member state was supposed to decide before April 1, 2020. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the issue has still not been resolved, and the planned end of the clock change remains on hold.
So France will keep alternating between winter time and summer time every six months. Winter time will remain the official time in France until March 28, 2027, when summer time returns. The system itself goes back to the 1973-1974 oil crisis, when the goal was to match activity hours more closely with sunlight and cut artificial lighting use, and the European Union later harmonized the dates in 1998.
For now, the unresolved question is not whether France will change its clocks this autumn. It will. The question is when Europe will finally settle the broader rule that has left the winter schedule in place for another year.
