2027 schedule
| Change | Date | Local time | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| No clock changes in 2027. Saudi Arabia does not observe Daylight Saving Time. | |||
Saudi Arabia stays on AST for the whole year.
Time until the next change
Current local time:
Technology and Time Changes in 2027
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.
Getting ready
- Take advantage of the 'extra' hour in fall to catch up on sleep or tackle a project.
- Consider the time change when scheduling meetings with people in other time zones.
- Be extra cautious driving the Monday after the spring time change - accident rates increase.
- Gradually adjust your sleep schedule a few days before the time change to minimize disruption.
Frequently asked questions
When do the clocks change in Saudi Arabia in 2027?
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.