Do I need to change my phone and computer manually?

No. Any device that syncs its time over the internet updates itself. Car clocks, ovens, microwaves and older wall clocks usually need doing by hand.

Daylight Saving Time in South Africa 2027

Q: Do the clocks change in South Africa in 2027?

No. South Africa does not observe Daylight Saving Time, so the clocks do not change at any point in 2027.

Q: Which way do the clocks go?

The usual mnemonic is "spring forward, fall back": clocks go forward one hour in spring and back one hour in autumn.

2027 schedule

Daylight Saving Time transitions in South Africa during 2027
Change	Date	Local time	What happens
No clock changes in 2027. South Africa does not observe Daylight Saving Time.

South Africa stays on SAST 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 South Africa 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

Check and replace smoke detector batteries when changing clocks - it's a good reminder!
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.
Consider the time change when scheduling meetings with people in other time zones.

Frequently asked questions

When do the clocks change in South Africa in 2027?

They do not. South Africa 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.