Why Are France and the UK an Hour Apart? The Story Behind the Clocks Going Back

Saturday/Sunday 24–25 October 2026

Time to change the clocks again!

During the night of Saturday 24 October into Sunday 25 October, the clocks go back one hour. At 3am in mainland France, the clocks go back to 2am.

So, the good news is that we get an extra hour in bed. The less exciting news is that the evenings will suddenly seem much darker.

And remember: when the clocks go back, mornings become lighter but evenings become darker.

The change takes place on the last Sunday in October, as it does throughout the EU and the UK.

But why, you may have wondered, is France an hour ahead of Britain in the first place?

DID YOU KNOW?

You can blame history – and a little bit of wartime geopolitics

Today, mainland France is one hour ahead of the UK all year round. In winter, France uses Central European Time (CET), while the UK remains on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). In summer, both countries move their clocks forward by one hour: France uses Central European Summer Time (CEST), while the UK uses British Summer Time (BST). So the difference between France and the UK remains one hour.

In other words, France is UTC+1 in winter and UTC+2 in summer, while the UK is UTC+0 in winter and UTC+1 in summer. (Head scratches allowed here!)

But it wasn’t always that way.

Before the Second World War, France’s standard time was aligned with Britain at GMT, although France had already used seasonal summer time at various periods.

Then came 1940.

During the German occupation, France was moved onto German time. The change was initially made in the occupied part of the country, and the French authorities subsequently adopted the same time throughout France, partly to keep transport and railway timetables synchronised.

After the Liberation, things got rather complicated.

France continued to use the wartime time arrangements for a while. In September 1945, the clocks were put back to GMT+1, with the intention of returning to GMT later that year.

And this is the really curious bit…

France was actually scheduled to return to GMT in November 1945 – but the government cancelled the change.

So France stayed at GMT+1.

And it has remained one hour ahead of the UK ever since.

So was it all because of Hitler?

Well… not quite!

It is tempting to say that Germany simply “put France on German time and France never got round to changing back”, and there is an element of truth in that. But the real story is more complicated.

France had its own history of changing the clocks before the war, and after the Liberation the French government made a deliberate decision not to return to GMT.

So perhaps the more accurate version is:

The war changed the clocks – but post-war France decided to leave them that way.

Spain followed a broadly similar path during the Franco period, moving its clocks to Central European Time rather than the time that might be expected from its geographical position. Spain’s time zone has been the subject of debate ever since.

And then came the oil crisis

France reintroduced summer time in 1976, following the oil crisis of the 1970s, partly with the aim of saving energy.

Since then, the familiar pattern has been:

Winter: France = GMT/UTC +1
Summer: France = GMT/UTC +2

The UK changes too, of course, but remains one hour behind France:

Winter: UK = GMT/UTC
Summer: UK = GMT/UTC +1

One final little curiosity…

When the clocks go back, Sunday 25 October 2026 will be 25 hours long in France.

At 3am, the clocks go back to 2am, so the hour between 2am and 3am happens twice.

Of course, very few of us will actually be awake to enjoy it.

And while the extra hour of sleep is welcome, the real price we pay is that those lovely summer evenings suddenly disappear.

Spring forward, fall back – and don’t forget to change the clocks!

DID YOU KNOW

Why does France have “the wrong” time zone?
Geographically, much of France sits closer to the UK’s time zone than Central Europe’s. Paris, for example, is well to the west of the longitude normally associated with Central European Time. So the fact that France is on CET is largely a historical and political decision rather than a reflection of where the sun says noon should be.