The week the clocks disagree
2026-10-26 · The Scrums team
Europe's clocks went back yesterday. North America's don't change until next Sunday. For one week, every meeting across the Atlantic moves by an hour for someone, unless your calendar knows the rules.
Yesterday, October 25, clocks across Europe went back an hour as summer time ended. Clocks in the US and Canada don't change until next Sunday, November 1.
For this one week, New York is four hours behind London instead of five, and Chicago is six hours behind Berlin instead of seven. The 9 am meeting a team in Boston set with colleagues in Dublin happens at 1 pm in Dublin this week, not 2 pm. Something similar happens for a few weeks each March, when North America moves its clocks forward first. It's a small thing, and every year it produces a round of missed meetings and confused calendars.
Why meetings drift
A meeting time means nothing without its timezone and that timezone's rules. "Every Monday at 15:00 UTC" stays fixed while everyone's local clocks move around it, so twice a year the meeting jumps an hour for nearly everybody. "Every Monday at 10:00 in New York" stays at 10:00 for New York and moves for everyone else on the weeks the countries disagree. The second is usually what teams mean, but plenty of tools store the first.
How Scrums handles it
- Planned sessions keep their timezone. When you plan a retro, poker session or health check for later, it's set at a time in a timezone, with that zone's daylight-saving rules. A session that repeats every week, or every two, three or four weeks, stays at the same local time all year.
- Calendar invitations carry the rules. With email on, everyone on the team gets a proper invitation that Outlook, Gmail and Apple Mail show as one, and each person's calendar shows the right local time, this week included.
- Standups open at the team's local time. Set the days and time once in Team settings → Daily standup, in the team's timezone, and it opens at that local time all year round.
- Your own calendar feed. Settings → Calendar gives each person a private address to subscribe to, showing their teams' planned sessions, their standups and the action items they're due to finish.
A planned session keeps its timezone, and its daylight-saving rules.
Scrums can't make two countries change their clocks on the same day. It can make sure everyone's calendar is right when they don't. Sign up and plan your team's next session.