2024 time change dates for Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia does not observe Daylight Saving Time
Clocks in Saudi Arabia stay on AST all year, so there is no spring forward or fall back date.
Saudi Arabia stays on AST 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 Saudi Arabia 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 Uniform Time Act of 1966 ended a chaotic period in which US cities set their own clock-change dates, and established a uniform national schedule.
- The European Parliament voted in 2019 to end mandatory clock changes, but member states never agreed on which time to keep, so the change has stalled indefinitely.
Tips for Saudi Arabia
Remember that not all countries change on the same date - check international meeting times carefully.
Be extra cautious driving the Monday after the spring time change - accident rates increase.
Check and replace smoke detector batteries when changing clocks - it's a good reminder!
Use the phrase 'Spring forward, fall back' to remember which direction to change your clocks.
Frequently asked questions
When do the clocks change in Saudi Arabia in 2024?
They do not. Saudi Arabia 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.