Daylight saving time and market hours

Daylight saving time (DST) means putting clocks forward one hour for part of the year, usually the local summer. Forex has no single clock: each trading session follows its financial centre's local time, and US data releases follow Washington's, so when New York or London moves its clock, everything timed from that city moves by an hour everywhere else.

The forex market hours guide has the session tables; this page covers the change dates and the weeks in between.

Each country sets its own rule; these are the ones that matter here, as of 6 November 2026:

• United States (New York): second Sunday of March to first Sunday of November, at 02:00 local time.
• United Kingdom and the EU (London, Frankfurt): last Sunday of March to last Sunday of October, at 01:00 UTC.
• Australia (Sydney, New South Wales): first Sunday of October to first Sunday of April, the southern summer.
• Japan (Tokyo): no daylight saving time.
• Mexico: no seasonal time since the Ley de los Husos Horarios took effect on 30 October 2022, except in listed northern-border municipalities; Mexico City and central Mexico stay on UTC−6.
• Colombia, Peru and Argentina: no daylight saving time; Bogotá and Lima stay on UTC−5, Buenos Aires on UTC−3.
• Chile (Santiago and continental Chile): first Saturday of September to first Saturday of April, at 24:00, by decree of the Ministerio del Interior, currently to April 2029; Aysén and Magallanes stay on UTC−3, Easter Island has its own time.

London went back on 25 October 2026 and New York on 1 November 2026; the next round is in March and April 2027. Checked on 6 November 2026 against the sources below.

Chile changes at midnight, so the Sunday shown is its first day on the new time; from 4 April 2027 Santiago (UTC−4) and Buenos Aires (UTC−3) no longer share a time.

The US changes its clocks before the UK in March and after it in early November, so for a few weeks New York is on summer time and London is not: in 2026, 8 March to 29 March and 25 October to 1 November; in 2027, 14 March to 28 March and 31 October to 7 November.

In those weeks New York (08:00–17:00 local time) opens at 12:00 UTC, its summer position, while London (08:00–17:00 local) still closes at 17:00 UTC, its winter position: about five hours of overlap, not four. Liquidity in EUR/USD and GBP/USD often follows the overlap, but a longer overlap says nothing about volatility, how far prices move.

Santiago is on UTC−3 in both mismatch windows, so its mismatch column is not July plus an hour.

Platform time

MetaTrader 5 shows the broker's server time, not your device's, in Market Watch and on the chart's time axis; that time zone may follow its own daylight saving rule, so the clock can jump on a date that is not your country's. On any platform, check which time zone the chart clock uses before reading a release time. This guide does not state it.

Release times

Releases keep their publisher's local time: US statistics come out at 08:30 Eastern Time whether or not Europe has changed its clocks, and an economic calendar converts them to the time zone in its settings. The table shows 08:30 Eastern, the US jobs report and CPI time; the New York open is 30 minutes earlier.

Where clocks never change, the mismatch column equals July's: a US release depends only on the US clock. Around a release, spreads can widen and prices can gap whatever the clocks say; a stop loss inside a gap is filled at the next available price.

None of this says whether to trade; it is a list of checks so a time on your screen means what you think.

1. Compare the platform clock with UTC or your phone; repeat on the Monday after each date above.
2. Read the hours in the Symbol Specifications of each instrument you trade; they are in server time and some instruments have a daily break.
3. Check your economic calendar's time zone setting, then compare one release time with the publisher's schedule.

At NextTrade, forex markets are open 24 hours from Monday to Friday, closing over the weekend. Trading hours may vary depending on the instrument and its underlying exchange, so this guide does not list hours for indices, metals or energies. The exact schedule of each instrument is in its Symbol Specifications in the trading platform.

Crypto CFDs are the exception: they can be traded 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including weekends. Crypto prices can move sharply at any time, including when you may not be watching your positions.

Checked against these primary sources on 6 November 2026; general information that governments can change, not NextTrade's data:

• United States: 15 U.S.C. §260a (uscode.house.gov) and NIST, Daylight Saving Time (nist.gov); release times: BLS release calendar (bls.gov)
• European Union and United Kingdom: Directive 2000/84/EC, Articles 2 and 3 (eur-lex.europa.eu); When do the clocks change (gov.uk)
• New South Wales: Daylight saving (nsw.gov.au); Standard Time Act 1987, section 2A (legislation.nsw.gov.au)
• Chile: Decreto N.º 98 of 30 June 2026, Ministerio del Interior, Diario Oficial of 2 July 2026 (diariooficial.interior.gob.cl)
• Mexico: Ley de los Husos Horarios en los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, DOF 28 October 2022, Articles 4 and 5 (dof.gob.mx)
• Fixed offsets of Tokyo, Mexico City, Bogotá, Lima and Buenos Aires: IANA Time Zone Database, release 2026f (iana.org/time-zones)