Prayer Times When the Clocks Change: What Moves and What to Check

When the clocks change, your prayers stay with the sun; only the clock moves. When the clocks go back an hour, every prayer time reads about an hour earlier than the day before. When they go forward, it reads about an hour later. A phone that sets its own time follows by itself. What you must move by hand is any Fajr alarm set for a fixed hour.

What Changes and What Stays

Each of the five prayers is tied to the sun: Fajr to the true dawn, Dhuhr to the moment just after the sun passes its highest point, Asr to the length of a shadow, Maghrib to sunset, Isha to the end of twilight. Our guide to how prayer times are calculated goes through each one.

None of that depends on what a government does with the clock. On the morning after a change the sun rises exactly when it would have, and we call that moment by another number. The gaps between your prayers stay as they were, and all five times slide together.

They do not slide by exactly 60 minutes, because the ordinary daily drift carries on underneath. In London in late October, Fajr comes about two minutes later each morning and Maghrib about two minutes earlier each evening. On the day of the change you see both movements at once.

When the Clocks Change

In the European Union the rule is one line of law: summer time ends at 01:00 UTC on the last Sunday of October, in every member state at the same instant. The European Commission's published schedule puts that on Sunday 25 October 2026. The United Kingdom changes the same night, at 02:00. In France, Belgium or Germany, 03:00 becomes 02:00.

In the United States, federal law ends daylight saving time at 02:00 on the first Sunday of November, which in 2026 is Sunday 1 November. Hawaii and most of Arizona do not change at all.

Canada leaves the rule to its provinces, and 2026 is an unusual year. Most of Ontario and Quebec change on the same Sunday as the United States. British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba now keep one time all year, with a few local exceptions. Manitoba announced its decision on 17 September 2026.

The clocks go forward again on the last Sunday of March in the European Union and the United Kingdom (28 March 2027) and, under the law in force today, on the second Sunday of March in the United States (14 March 2027).

A Worked Example: London and New York

Here are the two nights in real numbers, from Aladhan, the public prayer times service that Deeny also fetches its times from. London's times are calculated with the Muslim World League method (Fajr 18°, Isha 17°), New York's with the ISNA method (15° for both), each with the standard Asr. Times are on the 24-hour clock.

London, clocks back on Sunday 25 October 2026

New York, clocks back on Sunday 1 November 2026

Read down the last column. Dhuhr moves by the full hour. The morning times move a little less, because dawn was already coming later each day. The afternoon and evening times move a little more, because sunset was already coming earlier.

In both cities the change falls after Isha and before Fajr. Saturday's five prayers are all on the old clock, and Sunday's five are all on the new one.

The calculation method changes the times, and barely the size of the jump. In Paris, with the 12° method of the Union des organisations islamiques de France, Fajr goes from 07:15 to 06:17 on the same night: 58 minutes.

Why a Fixed Fajr Alarm Fails

An alarm in your phone's Clock app is set for a time of day, and it keeps that time. Fajr does not. Take a Londoner whose alarm is set for 07:00. On Saturday 24 October it rings 40 minutes before sunrise, inside the Fajr window. On Sunday the same alarm rings 18 minutes after the sun came up at 06:42.

Fajr ends at sunrise, so that alarm has stopped doing its job without anything looking broken. If that has already happened to you, our guide on what to do if you missed Fajr covers the next step.

In spring the mistake runs the other way. The clocks go forward, Fajr reads about an hour later, and a fixed alarm can ring before Fajr has begun. Look at the day's Fajr time before you pray.

This is the case for an alarm that follows the prayer instead of the clock. Deeny's Fajr alarm, part of Deeny Pro, is set that way: you choose At Fajr or a number of minutes before it, and each morning's alarm is worked out from that day's Fajr time. If you keep your phone's own alarm, move it on the Saturday night, using Sunday's times.

What to Check on Your Phone

Five small checks, in this order.

1. iPhone: let it set its own time. Open Settings → General → Date & Time and turn on Set Time Automatically and, where the screen shows it, Set Time Zone Automatically (older versions have a single switch, Set Automatically). Apple's support page says the Date & Time settings make the phone adjust by itself for time zone changes and daylight saving time.
2. Android: the same two switches. Open the Clock app, tap More → Settings → Change date and time, then turn on Automatic date and time and Automatic time zone. On a Samsung Galaxy they are under Settings → General management → Date and time.
3. Install pending updates. Each country's clock rules are data, and they reach your phone through system updates. Apple tells you to install the latest update, and to restart if a message says new time zone information is available. This matters most where the rule has just changed, as in Manitoba and Morocco in 2026.
4. Compare one day with your mosque. After the change, open your prayer app and hold Fajr and Maghrib against your mosque's timetable. A few minutes apart is the calculation method. Exactly one hour apart is usually the clock or the time zone, and our prayer app troubleshooting guide takes it from there.
5. Move any alarm you set by hand. Use the new Fajr and the new sunrise, not last week's.

Countries That Change on Other Dates, or Not at All

Many readers have no change on those two Sundays.

• Egypt keeps its own dates. By law, summer time runs from the last Friday of April to the end of the last Thursday of October. In 2026 that Thursday is 29 October.
• Morocco set its clocks back to GMT on Sunday 20 September 2026. Before that it kept GMT+1 and went back to GMT for Ramadan, from 15 February to 22 March in 2026. The public time zone database that Android phones take their rules from lists no further change.
• No change. That same database lists none in 2026 or 2027 for Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Algeria or Tunisia.

If your country does not change, nothing jumps. Your times simply keep their slow daily drift.

Frequently Asked Questions

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A clock change renames the hours of one night, and the five prayers come through it where they were. Let the phone keep its own time, give the Fajr alarm a moment on the Saturday evening, and hold one day against your mosque's timetable.