2028 schedule
| Change | Date | Local time | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clocks go forward | Sunday, March 26, 2028 | 2:00 AM | Jumps to 3:00 AM — one hour is lost |
| Clocks go back | Sunday, October 29, 2028 | 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.
Technology and Time Changes in 2028
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.
Agricultural Considerations
The story that DST was introduced for farmers has it exactly backwards. Farmers in Belgium and elsewhere were among its most persistent opponents, and the American farm lobby successfully campaigned to have national DST repealed after the First World War.
The reason is straightforward: farm work follows the sun, not the clock. Moving the clock forward just means doing the same work an hour earlier by the clock, while deliveries, markets and hired labour all shift with it. Dairy farmers make the point most often, since cows keep to their own schedule and take several days to adjust to a changed milking time.
Getting ready
- Gradually adjust your sleep schedule a few days before the time change to minimize disruption.
- Update your car clock, microwave, and other manual clocks that don't auto-update.
- Use the phrase 'Spring forward, fall back' to remember which direction to change your clocks.
- Use the extra evening daylight in summer for outdoor activities and vitamin D.
Frequently asked questions
When do the clocks change in Belgium in 2028?
Clocks go forward on Sunday, March 26, 2028 and back on Sunday, October 29, 2028.
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.