US daylight saving start date
In 2026, US daylight saving time starts on Sunday 8 March, when most clocks spring forward one hour at 2:00 a.m. local time. Enter a year to get that second Sunday of March as a calendar date for shifts, payroll and travel. Free in your browser.
- Free
- Runs in your browser
- No sign-up
- Your data stays on your device
Run — free
Worked example
- Year
- 2,026
- Month
- 3
- Day
- 8
- ISO date
- 2026-03-08
- Weekday
- Sunday
United States daylight saving time currently begins on the second Sunday of March, when most clocks spring forward one hour at two o’clock in the morning local time. Schedulers, payroll systems, travel tools, and calendar products need that calendar date without scraping government pages or depending on the host operating system’s time zone database. This capability takes a Gregorian year and returns the month, day, ISO date string, and the fixed rule label using pure integer calendar arithmetic evaluated in UTC fields.
What the second-Sunday-of-March rule means
Under the Energy Policy Act style schedule used in the continental United States and most participating jurisdictions since two thousand seven, daylight saving time starts on the second Sunday in March rather than the first Sunday in April. That single calendar rule is what people mean when they ask “when does daylight saving start this year” for US-facing products. The second Sunday always falls between March eighth and March fourteenth inclusive, because March has thirty-one days and Sundays recur every seven days from the weekday of March first.
This capability encodes exactly that rule: given a year, it finds the weekday of March first with a Gregorian congruence formula, advances to the first Sunday, then adds seven days to reach the second Sunday. It does not model every historical exception, state opt-out, or pre-two-thousand-seven April start; those are different product questions. It also does not convert wall-clock instants across time zones.
The output is the civil calendar date of the transition day, expressed as year, month, day, and an ISO-8601 calendar string so automation can store and display it without re-deriving the Sunday logic in every client.
Where teams use it and how pricing works
Support macros and knowledge bases can answer “when do clocks change in the US” with a machine-verified day instead of a hand-edited FAQ that goes stale every spring. The interactive tool above runs free in the browser for one-off lookups. Inputs and outputs follow the platform retention window and are not used to train models.
Latency is dominated by the task handshake rather than the arithmetic, so the capability fits high-frequency form validation as well as annual batch regeneration of schedule templates.
What you can do with it
Shift planning and payroll reminders
Surface the spring-forward calendar day in workforce tools so managers warn staff before the two o’clock local clock change.
FAQ
When does daylight saving time start in the United States?
Under the current Energy Policy Act style rule, US daylight saving time starts on the second Sunday of March. This capability returns that calendar date for any year you supply.
Does this include the exact local clock change time?
It returns the civil date of the transition (second Sunday of March) plus a note that clocks spring forward at 02:00 local time. It does not convert time zones or emit a full UTC instant for every US region.
Which dates can US daylight saving time start on?
Always a Sunday between 8 and 14 March. March has 31 days and Sundays repeat every seven days, so the second Sunday can never fall outside that week.
Does it cover states that do not change their clocks?
No. It applies the single national rule and does not model state opt-outs or historical exceptions. It also gives the calendar day only, without converting the change between time zones.
Did daylight saving time always start in March?
No. The second-Sunday-of-March rule has been used since 2007; before that, the start came in April. The calculator applies the March rule and does not model the earlier April start.
Related tools
For developers — API access
Everything on this page is available programmatically. This section is for teams who want to wire it into their own systems; everyone else can just use the tool above.
API endpoint
Prefer to automate it? One authenticated POST creates the task; the result comes back by webhook or a signed link. The same capability also runs here on the web, by email and from Telegram — and soon from our app too.
Call it from your stack
curl -X POST https://api.kit.forhosting.com/date/daylight-saving-start-us \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $KIT_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"year":2026}'const res = await fetch("https://api.kit.forhosting.com/date/daylight-saving-start-us", {
method: "POST",
headers: {
"Authorization": `Bearer ${process.env.KIT_KEY}`,
"Content-Type": "application/json"
},
body: JSON.stringify({
"year": 2026
})
});
const { task_id } = await res.json();import os, requests
res = requests.post(
"https://api.kit.forhosting.com/date/daylight-saving-start-us",
headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['KIT_KEY']}"},
json={
"year": 2026
},
)
task_id = res.json()["task_id"]<?php
$res = file_get_contents("https://api.kit.forhosting.com/date/daylight-saving-start-us", false, stream_context_create([
"http" => [
"method" => "POST",
"header" => "Authorization: Bearer " . getenv("KIT_KEY") . "\r\nContent-Type: application/json",
"content" => '{"year":2026}',
],
]));
$task = json_decode($res, true);body := bytes.NewBufferString(`{"year":2026}`)
req, _ := http.NewRequest("POST", "https://api.kit.forhosting.com/date/daylight-saving-start-us", body)
req.Header.Set("Authorization", "Bearer "+os.Getenv("KIT_KEY"))
req.Header.Set("Content-Type", "application/json")
res, _ := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)Example request
{
"year": 2026
}Example response
{
"task_id": "tsk_a1b2c3d4e5f6a1b2c3d4e5f6",
"type": "date.daylight_saving_start_us",
"status": "queued",
"_links": {
"result": "/tasks/tsk_…/result"
}
}The API is asynchronous: the call returns a task_id immediately and the result arrives by webhook. Polling is capped at 1 req/s per task.
Pricing
Published price — no tokens, no invented credits. A failed task is never charged.
Errors
| HTTP | Code | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
401 | unauthorized | Missing or invalid API key. |
402 | insufficient_balance | Your balance doesn't cover the task price. |
404 | unknown_type | That task type doesn't exist. |
429 | rate_limited | Too many requests. Use the webhook instead of polling. |
Technical notes
How to call the capability and read the fields
Do not pass a full timestamp when you only need the transition calendar date; supply the year alone and let the library derive the Sunday. Send a JSON object with a required integer year field. Aliases y and yr are accepted so forms and scripts can reuse short names without renaming payloads. The year must be a finite integer between one and nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine; missing, non-numeric, fractional, or out-of-range values fail with invalid_input and are not charged. On success the response includes year, month fixed at three for March, day as the day-of-month of the second Sunday, iso_date as YYYY-MM-DD, weekday as the constant string Sunday, rule as second_sunday_of_march, and a short note that clocks spring forward at two o’clock local time on that date. If your application also needs the November fall-back date or non-US rules, treat those as separate intents rather than overloading this endpoint.
Where teams use it and how pricing works
Product teams use this endpoint when onboarding forms, compliance calendars, shift-planning tools, and marketing “DST starts Sunday” reminders need a stable US start date without embedding fragile local Date math that varies by host time zone. Backend jobs that generate yearly holiday tables can request many years and store the returned iso_date next to other fixed observances. Programmatic calls use the prepaid balance at $0.002 per successful request, billed as one item per computation, with no subscription and no charge when validation fails.
Integration use cases
Yearly schedule and holiday table generation
Fill the US DST start row in annual calendar exports by computing second-Sunday-of-March iso_date for each year in the table.
Support macros and product copy
Answer “when does daylight saving start in the US” with a deterministic date from the API instead of a manually updated FAQ.
Technical questions
What input does the calculator require?
A single integer year (field year, or aliases y / yr). Other fields are ignored. Invalid or missing year values return invalid_input and are not charged.
Is the result deterministic across environments?
Yes. The library uses integer Gregorian arithmetic only—no Date, no network, no randomness—so the same year always produces the same JSON in the browser widget and the API.
How much does the US daylight saving start calculator cost?
The browser tool is free. API calls cost $0.002 per successful request from your prepaid balance; failed validation is never charged.