2024 time change dates for Russia
Russia does not observe Daylight Saving Time
Russia abandoned clock changes in 2011, spent three years on permanent summer time, then settled on permanent standard time in October 2014.
Russia stays on MSK for the whole year.
Countdown to the next change
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 Russia 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.
Background
- Germany and Austria-Hungary were the first countries to adopt DST nationally, in April 1916, as a wartime fuel-saving measure.
- The Energy Policy Act of 2005 extended US DST by four weeks starting in 2007, moving the start to the second Sunday in March and the end to the first Sunday in November.
- Arizona and Hawaii are the only US states that skip DST statewide, along with the territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the US Virgin Islands.
Tips for Russia
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.
Check and replace smoke detector batteries when changing clocks - it's a good reminder!
Consider the time change when scheduling meetings with people in other time zones.
Frequently asked questions
When do the clocks change in Russia in 2024?
They do not. Russia does not observe Daylight Saving Time.
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.