Belgium switches to summer time this weekend during the night of Saturday 29 to Sunday 30 March: at 02:00, clocks will go forward by one hour – resulting in one hour less sleep in exchange for an extra hour of daylight in the evenings.
Daylight saving time has been applied in Belgium since 1977. The original aim was to make more use of daylight to reduce the need for artificial lighting and save energy during the economic crisis at the time.
And though numerous studies have since refuted the need to make the change, many countries still use summer and winter time.
Critics highlight the disruption to people's biorhythms and note that the switch creates confusion as it is not applied universally. The Vias road safety institute stated that more accidents also happen on Flemish roads in the first week after switching to summer time.
In 2018, the European Commission suggested abolishing daylight saving time altogether, but Member States failed to agree on whether to stay in summer or winter time. It was eventually decided that each country could choose which system to adopt. However, Belgium's Federal Government has yet to decide on the matter.
In Belgium, summer time will run until Sunday 26 October 2025, at which point the country will switch back to winter time.
Which countries do (not) observe daylight saving time?
As of 2025, the practice of advancing clocks by one hour around spring and summer is observed in most of Europe (on the last Sunday of March) and North America (on the second Sunday of March).
The European countries that do not apply summer time are Iceland (which observes UTC+00:00 all year round), Turkey (which stays on UTC+03:00 throughout the year), Russia (which observed 'permanent summer time' from 2011, but in October 2014 switched permanently to UTC+03:00 in the country's west, including Moscow) and Belarus (which moved to UTC+03:00 all year round in 2011). Additionally, Greenland moved to permanent summer time (UTC-02:00) in spring 2023.
In the US, several states have passed laws to abolish seasonal changes and adopt permanent summer time. But these laws cannot take effect without approval from the Federal Government. Now, states may freely choose whether to observe daylight saving time or not, but they must follow the national schedule if they do observe it.
Twice per year in Belgium time on clocks and watches is changed. Credit: Belga Archives
Most Asian countries either never observed daylight saving time or formerly used it but ended it. China experimented with it from 1986 but abandoned it in 1992. Now, the whole country uses the same time zone (UTC+08:00).
While some African countries used daylight saving time in the past, they no longer do. Only Egypt – where it was first instituted by the British during the Second World War – still adheres to the practice, switching to summer time on the last Friday of April and ending on the last Thursday of October.
Additionally, the territories of the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla (Spain) and Madeira (Portugal) also implement daylight saving time from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October.
Many other countries and territories observed annual time changes for years but have now stopped. This includes Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Georgia, Hong Kong, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macau, Mongolia, Namibia, Paraguay, Samoa, Sudan, Syria, Uruguay, Vanuatu, and most of Mexico.
