Daylight Saving Time Ends Sunday as Clocks Fall Back Across Most of the United States
Clocks will be set back one hour at 2 a.m. Sunday, ending daylight saving time until March 2026, while lawmakers continue to debate making the change permanent.
The United States will shift clocks back one hour at 2 a.m. on Sunday, marking the end of daylight saving time for the season. The change will return the nation to standard time until daylight saving time resumes on the second Sunday in March 2026.
President Donald Trump has voiced support for ending the biannual clock changes, arguing that permanent daylight saving time would provide more daylight aligned with daytime activities and reduce after-hours activity, including crime. Health and sleep experts, however, have cautioned that a permanent shift could pose risks to public health and safety.
The transition will add an hour, moving the clock from 1:59 a.m. back to 1:00 a.m., and will result in earlier sunsets and darker evenings through the fall and winter months. While some jurisdictions allow bars to serve alcohol later based on the updated time, California law requires bars to stop serving two hours after midnight, regardless of the clock change.
Daylight saving time was first established by the Standard Time Act of 1918 and has undergone several revisions, including a brief year-round implementation by President Richard Nixon in 1974, which was later reversed. Since 2007, the schedule has been set to begin the second Sunday in March and end the first Sunday in November, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory.
Hawaii and most of Arizona, along with U.S. territories such as American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands, do not observe daylight saving time. Internationally, roughly one-third of countries use a form of summer time, primarily in the Northern Hemisphere.
Legislative efforts to make daylight saving time permanent have continued. Nineteen states have passed measures or resolutions in the past seven years to adopt year-round daylight saving time, but federal law still requires congressional approval. The Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act in 2022, but it stalled in the House, and a similar bill introduced in the House in January 2025 did not advance in the Senate.