Clocks go back 2026 and sleep: why you wake up too early

In the early hours of Sunday 25 October 2026, at 2am, the clocks in the UK go back to 1am. In the US, the same thing happens a week later, on Sunday, November 1. Your phone will change the time by itself while you sleep. Your body will take a few days to catch up.

People often say you get an extra hour of sleep when the clocks go back. The studies say otherwise: you don’t actually sleep that hour, and what really counts is the week after. None of this is your phone’s fault. But it shows up at three points in the week: on Saturday night, when you wake too early in the days that follow, and in the morning.

Full disclosure before I go any further: I make pourquoi.app, an app that asks a question when you open certain apps. So I have a stake in this. I’ll come back to it at the end.

Clocks go back 2026: what happens on 25 October

In the UK, British Summer Time ends on the last Sunday in October, when the clocks go back an hour (GOV.UK). This year that falls on the 25th, the earliest possible date.

In the US, daylight saving time ends on Sunday, November 1, 2026: at 2am local time, the clocks go back to 1am (NIST). Everything below applies on both sides of the Atlantic, a week apart.

In London, the sun will rise around 7:40am on Saturday and around 6:40am on Sunday. It will set around 5:50pm on Saturday and around 4:45pm on Sunday. In New York, on Sunday, November 1, sunrise moves from around 7:25am to around 6:25am, and sunset from around 5:55pm to around 4:50pm. Lighter mornings, and darkness an hour earlier in the evening.

Clocks going back and your phone: what time will your alarm go off?

If you set your alarm for 7am on Saturday night, it will go off at 7am on Sunday morning, on the new time. The alarm follows the time on the screen, and your phone switches to the new time by itself overnight. That’s the default setting: on iPhone, “Set Automatically” in Settings > General > Date & Time (Apple); on Android, “Automatic date and time”, though the name and location can vary depending on your phone’s brand.

To your body, though, that 7am feels like 8am. If you went to bed at your usual time, you get an extra hour in bed. You won’t necessarily spend it asleep, and the following days get trickier: more on that below.

The one exception: a phone whose time is set manually, or a traditional alarm clock that isn’t radio-controlled, won’t change its time by itself. It will go off at 7am on the old time, which is 6am on the new one. In that case, put it back an hour on Saturday night.

Clocks going back and sleep: do you really get an extra hour?

The gentler of the two clock changes

The autumn change is easier to cope with than the spring one. German researchers followed 50 people for eight weeks around each change: in autumn, their sleep and activity adjusted easily; in spring, much less so. In 2025, a review of 27 studies reached the same conclusion: the negative effects are concentrated in spring, and among night owls, people who are naturally at their best in the evening.

The usual explanation is that the time we switch to in autumn is a better match for our body clock. Dr Hakki Onen, a French sleep doctor, told a French health website that it is “closer to our internal biological rhythms”.

But you don’t really sleep that extra hour

This is the surprising part. People often say you gain an hour of sleep in autumn. Yet a 2013 review in the journal Sleep Medicine Reviews found little evidence of that extra sleep on the night of the change. And over the next five days, people get up earlier, so across the week they may actually lose sleep rather than gain it.

A small Finnish study points the same way. Around the autumn clock change, nine adults wore a watch that measures sleep. After the change, the proportion of time in bed they actually spent asleep fell, on average, from 86% to 80%, and their rhythm still hadn’t fully adjusted four days later. In this autumn study, early birds (people who are naturally at their best in the morning) were the most affected. Nine people is very few, so take it with a pinch of salt.

Why? For the first few days, your body clock stays on the old time. When it’s 5am on the new time, your body thinks it’s already 6am. So if you normally get up at 6am, it wakes you around 5am, an hour before your alarm. The evening works the same way: you start feeling sleepy around 10pm if you normally go to bed at 11pm.

How long does it take to adjust to the clock change?

It usually takes 3 to 5 days to adjust when the clocks go back, and up to about ten days for some people, according to Dr Onen. Armelle Rancillac, a neuroscience researcher at Inserm, France’s national health research institute, and at the Collège de France, said on the French radio station Europe 1 that it can take up to a week depending on the person, and that children adjust less easily.

So a few unsettled days are normal. If you’re still sleeping poorly long after that, talk to your doctor.

Saturday night: where does the extra hour go?

Saturday night first. You might recognise this thought: “I can stay up tonight, I’ll get an extra hour.” It’s the perfect excuse to stay on your phone a bit longer. And the extra hour is gone before you’ve even fallen asleep.

That’s what studies on phones in bed show. A 2024 review concludes that screen light and what you watch delay falling asleep by ten minutes or so at most. What counts is staying on your phone past the time you meant to go to sleep. A survey of 45,202 Norwegian students found that each hour of screen use in bed was linked to a 59% higher risk of insomnia symptoms, and 24 minutes less sleep, whatever they were doing on the screen. One caveat: the link may run the other way, as people who sleep badly are more likely to reach for their phone.

Researchers even have a name for it: bedtime procrastination. Putting off going to bed when nothing is keeping you up.

The simplest thing on Saturday is to go to bed at your usual time, which gives you a chance of actually sleeping that extra hour. Dr Charles Czeisler, a Boston sleep doctor, recommends exactly that in an article published by his hospital. I go into evening habits in more detail in the article on the last scroll before bed.

Waking too early after the clocks go back: the phone as a clock

This is the part of the week that matters most, and the one people talk about least.

You probably know the scene. It’s 5:40am and you wake up before your alarm. You grab your phone, just to check the time. The screen also shows your overnight messages and notifications. You open a message. Ten minutes later, you’re wide awake.

Checking the time at night isn’t as harmless as it looks. In an experiment published in 2007, people asked to watch a clock while trying to get to sleep worried more and thought they had taken longer to fall asleep. And that was an ordinary clock. On a phone, the time rarely shows up on its own.

A few ideas to choose from, depending on what suits you:

• Phone face down, out of reach. Or a small separate alarm clock, if you have one. If you don’t need your phone to know the time, you don’t need to pick it up.
• Notifications off at night. On iPhone, Sleep Focus; on Android, Bedtime mode. Your alarm will still go off: on iPhone, alarms still sound when a Focus is on; on Android, check that alarms are still allowed in Do Not Disturb. The authors of the 2024 review and the Norwegian study recommend the same: turn notifications off, or switch to Aeroplane Mode.
• If you pick it up anyway, ask yourself what you came for. Checking the time is one thing; reading your messages is another.

Picking up your phone at night is no big deal. The idea is that you pick it up because you decided to, not on autopilot.

The morning: light, and what the phone replaces

Then there’s the morning. Advice about light is often contradictory, and there’s a reason for that. Morning light moves your body clock earlier; evening light moves it later. And when the clocks go back, your body clock needs to shift an hour later. That’s why Dr Czeisler doesn’t advise against evening light for this particular change: blue-enriched white light can even help your body clock shift by an hour. And if the earlier daylight wakes you up, he suggests a sleep mask.

That doesn’t mean screens in the evening help you sleep. In a trial with 167 young adults, the iPhone’s Night Shift (the filter that turns the screen yellower in the evening) made no difference to their sleep, compared either with a phone without the filter or with no phone at all. According to the researchers, blue light doesn’t explain everything: what you do on the screen matters too.

Using your phone in bed in the morning isn’t harmful in itself either. Jacob Crouse, a researcher at the University of Sydney, told the Australian broadcaster SBS that the real question is what it replaces: getting up, going outside, moving about. If you want to protect that part of the day, the iOS 27 Screen Time article has a “The morning” setup you can fit around the time you get up.

Clock change week, day by day

The dates below are for the UK. In the US, shift everything a week later: Thursday, October 29 to Saturday, October 31, then Sunday, November 1.

• Thursday 22 to Saturday 24 (optional): if you can, go to bed and get up 15 minutes later each day, as Dr Onen advises. If your schedule doesn’t allow it, that’s fine.
• Saturday 24: go to bed at your usual time. If your phone is your alarm clock, check that it sets the time automatically.
• Sunday 25: if the daylight wakes you too early, close the curtains properly or try a sleep mask. Later in the day, there’s no need to avoid light.
• Monday 26 and the following days: get up at the same time every day, by the new clock. If you wake up too early, don’t pick up your phone to check the time.
• By the end of the week: look at what time you first pick up your phone in the morning, and after 10pm. Not to judge yourself, just to find out. Seven days to see where your screen time goes explains how.

Frequently asked questions

When do the clocks go back in 2026?

In the UK, at 2am on Sunday 25 October 2026, the clocks go back to 1am. In the US, it happens a week later, on Sunday, November 1, 2026, at 2am local time. The next change, when the clocks go forward, is in the early hours of Sunday 28 March 2027 in the UK, and on Sunday, March 14, 2027, in the US.

Do you get an extra hour of sleep when the clocks go back?

Not really. The clocks go back an hour, but studies find little extra sleep on the night of the change. In the days that follow, people tend to wake up earlier, which often cancels out the gain over the week.

How long does it take to adjust to the clocks going back?

Usually 3 to 5 days, and up to about ten days for some people. The autumn change, when the clocks go back, is the gentler of the two.

Why do I wake up too early after the clocks go back?

Your body clock is still on the old time: when it’s 5am, your body thinks it’s already 6am. So if you normally get up at 6am, it wakes you an hour too early, around 5am. It sorts itself out within a few days.

What time will my alarm go off the day after the clocks go back?

At the time you set, but on the new time: an alarm you set on Saturday night for 7am goes off at 7am on Sunday morning. To your body, it feels like 8am, so you get an extra hour in bed. This assumes your phone sets its time automatically, which is the default setting. If it doesn’t, the alarm will go off at 6am, new time.

Does the light from your phone stop you adjusting to the clock change?

Its effect is smaller than people think. When the clocks go back, evening light can even help your body clock shift. What matters more is the time spent on your phone instead of sleeping.

What about babies and young children?

Children adjust less easily than adults, says French researcher Armelle Rancillac. Her advice, which works for the whole family: in the days before the change, move bedtime and mealtimes about ten minutes later each day. For a baby, ask your GP or health visitor (your pediatrician in the US).

Where pourquoi.app fits

At 5:40am, when you grab your phone “just to check the time”, the clock isn’t always the only thing you look at. Sometimes you open Instagram, your email or YouTube.

That’s the moment pourquoi.app, the app I make, asks its question: “Why are you opening this app?” It only appears for the apps you’ve picked, not when you turn on the screen to check the time, and it doesn’t touch your alarm. Six possible answers, a single tap to pick one: “Communicate”, “Search”, “Work”, “Entertain myself”, “No reason”, “Other”. Nothing is blocked: tap an answer, and the app opens.

By default it asks every time; Premium lets you space the questions out. The questions are free and unlimited, and the free plan shows your stats for today and the last seven days. Premium prices are on the home page. Your history stays on your phone.

The app won’t make you sleep more, and no study has tested it on sleep. It helps you notice when you reach for your phone, that’s all. The better sleep use case explains how to use it in the evening and at night, and setup takes a few minutes: iPhone guide, Android guide.

Who writes here

I’m Nicolas Carrion, and I designed and built pourquoi.app, an app for people who don’t want to give up their smartphone but want to choose when it gets their attention. I’m not a researcher or a sleep doctor: every figure links to its source, and I checked them all on 12 October 2026. This article will be updated every year ahead of the autumn clock change. My background and how to reach me are on the about page.