Clocks Go Back 25 Oct 2026: Flights, Night Trains, Ferries

What a night train does during a 25-hour night

Between 01:00 and 02:00, local time happens twice. A train running at that moment would arrive an hour early if nothing changed. The only solid primary source we found is Deutsche Bahn: in its press pack on the clock change (March 2021), it explains that night trains stop at a suitable station during the extra hour, so they reach their destination at the timetabled time and not an hour earlier. For the 2026 change, netzwelt, citing DB, says the operator opts for a 60-minute stop rather than a delayed departure or an early arrival.

On the French side, as far as we know there’s no SNCF statement detailing the procedure for its night Intercités. According to the press (Journal de l’Économie, Yahoo Actualités), trains still running at the changeover generally stop for an hour at the nearest station. For Nightjet, European Sleeper and Caledonian Sleeper we found no published guidance, so we can’t tell you what applies to your train.

What to remember

• The arrival time shown on your ticket remains the reference: the stop exists precisely so that it’s kept.
• On a train that stands still for an hour, you’d simply sleep longer on the spot: that’s a logical consequence of DB’s practice, not a promise from any given operator.
• The stop may happen in a station or out on the line: no source says which.

If you’re planning an overnight journey, our guides to 10 European night train routes worth trying and to the new routes of 2026 give you the big picture. For specific lines, there’s European Sleeper’s Paris-Berlin, the Brussels-Milan service and ÖBB’s new Nightjet trains. Heading to Italy, our night train versus plane comparison puts numbers on price, journey time and CO2.

What changes for a flight, and what doesn’t

Airlines build their schedules in UTC: airport slots are requested in that reference, as the Dutch slot coordinators and the Irish authority point out in its draft decision on Dublin’s winter capacity. The time printed on your ticket is then converted into the local time for that day and place. According to Travel Extra, published schedules already reflect the change. There’s nothing to recalculate for a scheduled flight.

Apparent duration and real duration

A flight’s real duration doesn’t move. What moves is the gap between local departure and local arrival times. Here’s a worked example, with a made-up 8-hour flight and not an airline schedule: a flight leaving London at 11:00 on Saturday 24 October lands in New York at 14:00 (a 5-hour gap). The same flight, leaving at the same local time on Monday 26, lands at 15:00 (a 4-hour gap), because the United States only turns its clocks back on 1 November. If you see the displayed duration vary by an hour from one day to the next, it’s neither a delay nor a longer flight: it’s the time difference that has moved.

To keep their slots in Europe during this off-sync week, airlines may also shift their local times by an hour on North Atlantic routes. Hence the point of reading the time on your ticket and never inferring it from last year’s.

The winter season starts the same day

The IATA winter air season runs from 25 October 2026 to 27 March 2027, according to the Irish authority. It’s a separate mechanism from the clock change, but it lands on the same Sunday: airlines switch to their winter programme, and some routes disappear or appear. L’Écho touristique notes, for instance, that Ryanair is announcing a record winter programme. If your usual route has changed day or time, check your confirmation email.

What if your flight is delayed?

The 3-hour compensation threshold is measured at arrival at the final destination, when at least one aircraft door opens, according to the EU Court of Justice ruling Germanwings v Henning (case C-452/13, 2014), explained here. The legal amounts are €250, €400 or €600 depending on distance. Flights leaving the UK fall under the UK’s own version of these rules, with compensation set in pounds. We found no special rule for the night of the clock change: a delay is counted in real elapsed time, not in the difference between local times.

Channel, Baltic, Corsica: what each case says

The only sourced fact from a ferry company: on its Newhaven-Dieppe route (a crossing of around 4 hours), DFDS states that times are given in local time. In other words, just like for flights, the departure port’s time and the arrival port’s time are each read in their own time zone.

On the Channel, the gap between the UK and France stays at one hour before and after 25 October, since both countries change on the same night (calculated from IANA time zone data; see gov.uk for the UK date). Same logic in the Baltic: Finland is one hour ahead of Sweden, before and after. Between mainland France, Corsica and Sardinia, there’s no time difference at all.

That leaves the overnight crossing that passes through the changeover: local time repeats itself there, as on a train. We found no ferry company (DFDS, Brittany Ferries, Corsica Linea, Corsica Ferries, Irish Ferries, Stena, Tallink, Viking Line) that publicly explains what it does on board or how it presents the arrival time that night. Rather than invent a procedure, it’s better to rely on two things: your booking confirmation and the announcement on board.