The clocks go back.What happens to your meetings?

Twice a year, the clocks change, and twice a year Europe and North America don’t change them on the same day. Most people only notice when a recurring call turns up an hour early, or an hour late.

We’ve all been there. All week, colleagues, friends and family have reminded you that the clocks change on Sunday, and yet somehow you still forget. The bathroom timer still shows the old time because it needs changing by hand, as do most of the clocks around the home. It’s only when you switch on today’s early kick-off that you realize you’ve either missed the first half or still have an hour to go. Sound familiar, or is it just me? The latter, if you ask my wife!

But what happens during the work week? The time has changed for you, but colleagues in other parts of the world are due their change later in the week. So how does that affect the “bridging” week?

In this piece: what actually happens in the bridging week, a checker to see where your meetings land, what Doodle’s data shows about transatlantic meetings in those weeks, a myth-or-fact round on the clock change itself, and a few ways to make the most of it.

Because they follow different rules. In the EU and the UK, clocks go back on the last Sunday of October and forward on the last Sunday of March. In the US and most of Canada, they go back on the first Sunday of November and forward on the second Sunday of March.

So this autumn, Europe changes on Sunday 25 October and the US on Sunday 1 November. For those seven days, every time difference across the Atlantic is an hour shorter. London and New York are four hours apart, rather than five. Berlin and Chicago are six, rather than seven. In spring, the bridging period lasts about three weeks.

There’s talk of ending the switch. The US House of Representatives passed the Sunshine Protection Act, which would keep daylight saving time all year, on 14 July 2026. As of 17 October, it still needs the Senate, so the US clocks go back on 1 November as usual. Some places have already stopped: British Columbia moved its clocks forward for the last time on 8 March 2026, and most of the province will stay on daylight time all year. In Europe, a 2019 plan to end clock changes has stalled.

Sources: timeanddate.com, EU daylight saving time · House Energy and Commerce Committee, July 2026 · EURweb, 17 October 2026 · Government of British Columbia, March 2026

Pick where you are, where the other person is, and the time your meeting starts for you. The checker shows where it lands for them before the change, in the bridging week and after, and how many hours of 9 to 5 you share. Nothing you pick is stored or sent.

In my view, the bridging week is the one time of year when a little calendar admin pays off straight away: a two-minute check of your recurring calls saves an awkward empty meeting room.

Good, as it turns out. We looked at meetings booked through Doodle between people in Europe and North America, in every bridging week from autumn 2023 to spring 2026, and compared them with the normal weeks around them.

Why does the bridging week help?

Because people keep their usual hours on their own clock. When the gap shrinks by an hour, the window where both sides are at work grows. Fewer meetings need someone in Europe to stay late, or someone in North America to start early.

The effect shows up in every autumn and spring we looked at, and it disappears the week the second region changes its clocks.

Do meetings move when the clocks change?

Not on the local clock. Measured in global time, Europe’s scheduling activity shifts by almost exactly an hour when the clocks change, and stays put in local time. People keep their 10 o’clock, wherever 10 o’clock now falls.

There’s an early-bird effect too. In the week after the clocks go back, more scheduling happens before 9am, and in spring it goes the other way. That extra hour in bed seems to get used at the desk.

Source: Doodle data, transatlantic meetings 2023 to 2026

Eight things people say about daylight saving time. Pick myth or fact for each, then see what the evidence says.

Sources: U.S. History, Franklin’s letter · AgAmerica · Western Front Association · American College of Cardiology · University of Colorado Boulder · House Energy and Commerce Committee · American Academy of Sleep Medicine

A few habits make the clock change a non-event, and the bridging week a small bonus.

1. 1.Check your recurring calls with the other side. Any standing meeting between Europe and North America moves by an hour for one side during the bridging week. A quick look on the Friday before saves a no-show.
2. 2.Say which time zone a meeting belongs to. A calendar event keeps the time of the organizer’s time zone, so the other side sees it move. Naming it in the invite takes the guesswork out.
3. 3.Use the week for the hard-to-fit meetings. With an extra hour of shared working time, the bridging week is a good moment for the sessions that usually push someone outside their hours.
4. 4.Go easy on the Monday after the spring change. Losing an hour of sleep has measurable effects, so it’s a poor day for the meetings that need everyone at their sharpest.

Where does Time OS help?

Booking pages offer times from your real availability, inside the meeting hours you set. Group polls let people in different places vote on a few options, with no account needed. On the Team and Enterprise plans, Find Time shows when colleagues are free before you send an invite.

For me, the best thing a calendar can do around a clock change is nothing at all: your hours stay your hours, and the meetings fit around them.

We used meetings booked through Doodle (group polls, booking pages and 1:1s) where the organizer and a participant were in time zones in Europe and in the US or Canada. Time zones come from the settings people schedule in, not their country. The data covers Doodle’s classic product.

A meeting counts as outside 9 to 5 if it starts before 9:00 or at 17:00 or later in local time for either side. We compared each bridging week (autumn 2023, 2024 and 2025, spring 2024, 2025 and 2026) with the normal weeks around it. The share of meetings outside 9 to 5 is high in every week, because the definition is strict and includes the US West Coast, so we report the change.

The early-bird figure compares the share of polls, booking pages and 1:1s created before 9am local time in the week after the clocks go back with the two weeks before. We report relative changes only, never counts. The weekly samples run to hundreds of meetings, and the pattern repeats in every season.