Set your alarm (then double-check it). At 1am on Sunday 25 October 2026, the UK leaves British Summer Time behind and returns to Greenwich Mean Time. In practice, 2am becomes 1am again — you get an extra hour in bed, but the sun will call it a day noticeably earlier. Londoners will see sunset around 4.50pm on Sunday instead of roughly 6.30pm on Saturday, which shifts the feel of any trip planned for the days after.
For anyone travelling that night, the changeover hour is the fiddly bit. Overnight buses, coaches and trains can be disrupted, and some operators deliberately run services twice through the repeat hour — so a coach that leaves at 1.30am BST might also run at 1.30am GMT, an hour later. Worth confirming with the operator before you head out, and remember to wind back any manual alarm clocks or watches before bed on Saturday; phones handle it automatically.
Flights are where it gets genuinely confusing, because the timing of the change varies by country. India, Japan, Turkey, South Africa and Brazil don't observe daylight saving at all, so their clocks stay put year-round. The USA falls back a week after the UK — this year that's Sunday 1 November. Most of Europe changes in step with Britain.
So if you're on an overnight flight while the UK clocks move — say, heading to India on Saturday night — the time difference between origin and destination shrinks by an hour. The flight itself is no longer, but the local arrival time will look an hour earlier than you'd calculated. Airlines always publish times in local time, so your booking will be right; it's only your mental arithmetic that needs a reset.
The easiest fix, and a good jet-lag tactic generally: set your watch or phone to your destination's local time as soon as you board, and stop thinking in departure-zone time entirely. For anyone staying in the UK, the practical upside is simple — a bonus hour of sleep, and a slightly easier start if you've got an early Sunday connection to catch.
