Will Daylight Saving Time Be Abolished?

Daylight Saving Time (DST)

For fifty years the answer was “probably not.” It has changed. On 14 July 2026 the US House of Representatives passed the Sunshine Protection Act by 308 votes to 117, sending a bill to end the twice-yearly clock change to the Senate for the first time in the modern history of the proposal. In Europe, a Commission impact study commissioned in February 2026 is due to report by the end of the year. Neither is a law yet — but the question is no longer hypothetical.

Where the United States Stands Right Now

The Sunshine Protection Act has been introduced in every Congress since 2018, when Florida passed a state law asking for permanent daylight saving time and discovered it could not have one: federal law lets a state opt out of DST into permanent standard time, but not opt into permanent DST. Only Congress can grant that. Nineteen other states have since passed similar trigger laws, all of them waiting on Washington.

As drafted, the bill would move the whole country onto the offsets currently used from March to November and keep them there — so Eastern Time would be UTC−4 permanently, Pacific Time UTC−7, and the labels EST and PST would fall out of everyday use entirely (see Time Zone Abbreviations Explained). States that prefer permanent standard time could exempt themselves before the act took effect, which is the mechanism Phoenix and the rest of Arizona already use today. The current rules, and which US territories sit outside them, are covered in Daylight Saving Time in the United States Explained.

The Senate is the open question. The 2022 version passed there almost by accident — unanimous consent with barely any floor debate, and several senators later said they had not realised what they were agreeing to. A 2026 vote would be scrutinised far more closely, and the objection raised in October 2025 is the one that keeps resurfacing: under permanent DST, midwinter sunrise in the western edges of each zone would fall after 9:00 AM.

Why Europe Voted to Stop and Then Did Not

Europe got further, earlier, and then stalled harder. In 2018 the European Commission ran a public consultation that drew 4.6 million responses — the largest in EU history at the time — of which about 84% wanted the clock changes gone. On 26 March 2019 the European Parliament voted 410 to 192 to abolish seasonal changes, with 2021 as the target date.

Then it reached the Council, where national governments negotiate, and stopped. The blocking problem is geographic rather than ideological. Europe already runs on three main time zones, and if each country picked its own permanent offset independently, the map would fragment: a Spain that froze on summer time and a Portugal that froze on winter time would end up two hours apart instead of one. Governments were asked to coordinate their choices and could not agree, so the file has simply sat there since 2019.

It is moving again, slowly. A 2025 Council presidency floated a two-year EU-wide trial of permanent summer time; member states asked for evidence before committing. The Commission launched a formal impact assessment in February 2026, due to report by the end of the year. Until it does, the last-Sunday-in-March and last-Sunday-in-October rule stands, in the United Kingdom as well as the EU.

The Real Argument Is Not Whether, but Which

Almost nobody defends changing the clocks twice a year. The deadlock is over what replaces it, and the two options are not symmetrical — they move the light to opposite ends of the winter day.

Both US bills and most European proposals lean towards permanent summer time, because the public argument is usually framed as “keep the light evenings.” The scientific advice runs the other way.

What sleep researchers argue

The medical case for permanent standard time rests on a simple point: the body clock is set primarily by morning light, not evening light. Standard time keeps solar noon closest to clock noon, which is the alignment human circadian rhythms evolved around. Permanent DST would hold the entire population an hour out of phase with the sun through every winter, a state researchers call chronic social jetlag and link to poorer sleep, mood and metabolic outcomes.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine issued a formal position statement in 2020 calling for the permanent adoption of standard time, and the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms reached the same conclusion. It is a rare case where the professional consensus is unusually one-sided and the legislative momentum is running the other way.

The 1974 experiment nobody in Congress mentions

The United States has already run this test. Responding to the 1973 oil crisis, Congress put the country on year-round daylight saving time starting 6 January 1974. Polling before the change showed roughly 79% support. Within two months it had collapsed to about 42%.

The reason was children walking to school in the dark. In the northern and western parts of each zone, January sunrise slipped past 8:30 or 9:00 AM, and a series of widely reported school-run accidents turned public opinion decisively. Congress amended the law in October 1974 to restore standard time for the winter, and the experiment expired for good in 1975. Any serious 2026 debate ends up back at that precedent.

The Countries That Already Stopped

Abolition is not theoretical — it is the global trend, and it has been for two decades. Of roughly 195 countries, only about 70 still change their clocks, and nearly all of them are in Europe, North America and a handful of southern-hemisphere states.

Moscow is the cautionary tale in that list. Russia abolished the clock change in 2011 by freezing the country on summer time — exactly what the Sunshine Protection Act proposes. Winter mornings became so dark that public pressure forced a second reform in 2014, this time onto permanent standard time, where it has stayed. Egypt runs the experiment in reverse: it abandoned DST in 2014 and then brought it back in 2023 for energy reasons, proving these decisions are not one-way.

The larger picture is that most of the world never adopted seasonal clocks at all. Countries near the equator gain nothing from them because day length barely varies, and several industrialised nations rejected them on other grounds entirely — the reasoning is set out in Countries That Do Not Use Daylight Saving Time and, for one detailed case, in Why Japan Does Not Use DST.

What Would Actually Change If It Passed

• The offsets freeze, the zones stay. The map of US time zones would be unchanged; only the seasonal shifting stops. Full detail in Time Zones in the United States Explained.
• Half the abbreviations retire. With no standard-time months, EST, CST, MST and PST would become historical terms and only the D-forms would remain in use.
• Transatlantic scheduling gets simpler in one way, harder in another. The two- to three-week spring window when the US has changed and Europe has not would disappear, but the year-round London–New York gap would become 4 hours instead of 5 — a permanent change to every recurring call. See Best Time for Meetings Between Europe and USA.
• Software updates itself. Time zone databases would publish new rules and devices would pick them up automatically, as they did after the 2007 US rule change and the 2022 Mexican reform.

So Will It Happen?

The honest answer for 2026 is: closer than ever, and still not certain. The US bill has cleared a chamber for the second time in four years, but never both in the same Congress, and Senate opposition is now organised rather than absent. Europe has an impact study running and a decade-long habit of not deciding.

The safest planning assumption is that the clocks will change on schedule at least through 2027 — the dates are listed in When Do the Clocks Change? — and that if the change comes, it will arrive with at least a year of notice, because airlines, exchanges and rail networks need the lead time. If you want the earliest reliable signal, watch the US Senate calendar and the Commission study due at the end of 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions

Has daylight saving time been abolished in the United States?

No. The House of Representatives passed the Sunshine Protection Act on 14 July 2026 by 308 votes to 117, but the bill still needs to pass the Senate and be signed into law. Until that happens the existing rule applies: clocks go forward on the second Sunday of March and back on the first Sunday of November.

Would permanent daylight saving time mean lighter or darker mornings?

Darker. Permanent DST moves an hour of light from the morning to the evening all year, so midwinter sunrise would fall an hour later than it does now — after 9:00 AM in the western parts of several US zones. That is what ended the 1974 experiment after ten months.

Why did the EU never implement its 2019 decision?

Because the European Parliament can vote for a directive but the Council of member states has to agree the details, and governments could not settle on which permanent offset each country would keep. Uncoordinated choices would have left neighbouring countries with new and larger time gaps, so the file stalled and has been unresolved since 2019.

Which countries have already abolished the clock change?

Among the most recent: Argentina in 2009, Russia in 2011, Turkey and Azerbaijan in 2016, Namibia in 2017, Brazil in 2019, Mexico, Iran, Jordan and Syria in 2022, and Paraguay in 2024. Only about 70 countries worldwide still change their clocks twice a year.

Do experts prefer permanent standard time or permanent summer time?

Sleep and circadian researchers strongly prefer permanent standard time, because it keeps clock noon closest to solar noon and preserves morning light, which is what sets the body clock. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine took that position formally in 2020. Most political proposals, including the US bill, go the other way and favour permanent summer time.

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Related guides

• What Is Daylight Saving Time?
• Daylight Saving Time in the United States Explained
• When Do the Clocks Change? DST Dates Around the World
• Countries That Do Not Use Daylight Saving Time
• Why Japan Does Not Use DST
• Time Zones in Europe Explained
• Time Zones in the United Kingdom Explained
• Time Zone Abbreviations Explained: EST, EDT, CET and IST