Clocks Go Back One Hour in Germany, Sunday 25 October
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Germany ends summer time on Sunday 25 October 2026. At 03:00 in the night from Saturday 24 to Sunday 25 October, clocks are set back one hour to 02:00, according to the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs. Central European Summer Time ends and winter time begins. It stays in force until the next change on 28 March 2027.
Because the hour between 02:00 and 03:00 happens twice, Sunday 25 October lasts 25 hours. The national metrology institute PTB in Braunschweig, which distributes Germany's legal time, labels the two passes 2A and 2B. The change happens at the same moment in all EU member states and is fixed by European rules, so Germany cannot end it on its own.
The change affects everyone. Radio-controlled clocks, phones and computers adjust by themselves. The PTB time signal sent from Mainflingen near Frankfurt am Main resets around one hundred million clocks automatically, from alarm clocks to station clocks. Clocks that do not update automatically, such as wall clocks, ovens, car dashboards and analogue watches, have to be set by hand.
What changes in daily life: you get one extra hour of sleep on the night of Saturday 24 to Sunday 25 October. Mornings are bright an hour earlier, and it gets dark an hour earlier in the evening. To avoid being an hour early or late on Sunday, set the clocks that do not update on their own before going to bed on Saturday 24 October or on Sunday morning. Public clocks controlled by the radio signal change on their own.
Sources: Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie (BMWE), RUHR24
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