2024 schedule
| Change | Date | Local time | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clocks go forward | Sunday, March 31, 2024 | 2:00 AM | Jumps to 3:00 AM — one hour is lost |
| Clocks go back | Sunday, October 27, 2024 | 3:00 AM | Returns to 2:00 AM — one hour is gained |
Belgium keeps CET in winter and shifts one hour forward for the summer.
Time until the next change
Current local time:
Economic Impact of DST in Belgium
The economic effects of Daylight Saving Time in Belgium are real but modest, and studies disagree on their size. Retailers and hospitality businesses generally favour DST, arguing that lighter evenings encourage shopping, dining out and other after-work spending — the US retail lobby was one of the main forces behind the 2005 extension of the DST period.
The transitions themselves carry a cost. Research from Chmura Economics has put the one-off economic cost of the spring change in the United States at roughly $430 million a year, driven by lost productivity, workplace injuries and the health effects of a disrupted night's sleep.
Health Considerations for Belgium Residents
The spring transition is the one that hurts. A study in Open Heart found the risk of heart attack rose by about 24% on the Monday after clocks went forward, before falling back to normal within the week. Research published in Current Biology found a 6% rise in fatal traffic accidents in the week following the spring change, with the effect strongest in the morning and in the western parts of time zones.
The autumn change, when most people gain an hour, shows no comparable spike. Researchers attribute the difference to sleep loss rather than to the clock change itself.
Technology and Time Changes in 2024
Phones, computers and anything else that syncs with an internet time server handle the transition on their own. What still catches people out in Belgium is the long tail of devices that don't: car dashboards, ovens and microwaves, wall clocks, older thermostats, and cheap alarm clocks with a DST setting hard-coded to a schedule that has since changed.
For anyone running servers, the transitions are a recurring source of bugs — duplicated or missing local timestamps around the changeover, cron jobs that fire twice or not at all, and stale operating system timezone databases. Storing timestamps in UTC and keeping the tzdata package current avoids almost all of it.
Getting ready
- Gradually adjust your sleep schedule a few days before the time change to minimize disruption.
- Take advantage of the 'extra' hour in fall to catch up on sleep or tackle a project.
- Update your car clock, microwave, and other manual clocks that don't auto-update.
- Set your clocks before going to bed to avoid confusion in the morning.
Frequently asked questions
When do the clocks change in Belgium in 2024?
Clocks go forward on Sunday, March 31, 2024 and back on Sunday, October 27, 2024.
Which way do the clocks go?
"Spring forward, fall back" is the usual mnemonic: forward one hour in spring, back one hour in autumn.
Do I have to change anything myself?
Phones, computers and anything that syncs over the internet update on their own. Car clocks, ovens, microwaves and older wall clocks generally do not.
Is Daylight Saving Time being scrapped?
It has been proposed in many places and adopted in few. The European Parliament voted in 2019 to end mandatory clock changes and the change has stalled; in the United States the Sunshine Protection Act has repeatedly passed the Senate without becoming law. Most of the world that changes its clocks is still changing them.