Mysterious Sunday only lasts 23 hours due to the time change
The clocks in Switzerland and most European countries went forward by one hour on Sunday night. This means that summer time will apply again until October. According to SBB, the changeover went smoothly for rail services.
29.03.2026, 03:00
29.03.2026, 09:31
SDA
At 2 o'clock, the clocks were put forward by one hour to 3 o'clock. This meant that domestic trains were canceled during this hour, while international trains arrived an hour later in the morning. There were no problems, SBB spokeswoman Sabrina Schellenberg told the Keystone-SDA news agency on Sunday.
The time change to "Central European Summer Time" (CEST) begins on the last Sunday in March and ends on the last Sunday in October. Summer time 2026 will last 30 weeks or 210 days. On October 25, the clocks will be set back to 2 a.m. and standard time at 3 a.m.
The possible abolition of the seasonal time change has become a political issue, particularly in Switzerland's neighboring countries. The EU Commission presented concrete plans, but the member states of the European Union did not follow suit.
Critics of the time change complain about negative effects on health and animal welfare. Children and older people in particular would suffer from mini-jetlags. There would also be more traffic accidents due to fatigue. The changeover is also a thorn in the side of the agricultural sector, as the milk yield of cows is said to be lower.
Daylight saving time was first introduced in Europe in 1973 against the backdrop of the oil crisis. The time shift was intended to give businesses and households an extra hour of daylight with the aim of saving energy. To avoid becoming a time island, Switzerland followed suit in 1981.
Metas keeps the time
In Switzerland, the Swiss Federal Institute of Metrology (Metas) is responsible for time. It maintains several atomic clocks in its laboratories and thus participates in the realization of Universal Time Coordinated (UTC).
The International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sèvres near Paris uses data from around 350 to 400 atomic clocks at over 60 reference laboratories around the world to determine coordinated universal time. It is the global reference time that sets the beat for all time zones.
There are around a dozen particularly accurate atomic clocks, known as primary frequency standards, around the world for fine-tuning world time. One of these clocks is also located at Metas in Wabern near Bern. This clock, called "Fontaine Continue Suisse", is so accurate that it would take 30 million years for two of these special clocks to show a difference of one second.
According to Metas, precise time is playing an increasingly important role, for example in stock market trading or the implementation of technologies.
