Cuba and Florida are preparing to change their clocks next Sunday, November 1, 2026, when both territories will end Daylight Saving Time and will need to set their clocks back one hour. Although the adjustment will occur at different times in the early morning, Miami and Havana will continue to share the same time once the change is completed.
According to the official calendar of the National Institute of Standards and Technology of the United States (NIST), in Miami, the change will take place at 2:00 AM on Sunday, November 1.
At that moment, the clocks will strike 1:00 a.m. again, which means that residents will have an extra hour that night.
The modification marks the end of Daylight Saving Time, which has been in effect since March 8, and will mean that it will dawn earlier, although it will also get dark earlier in the evenings.
The change will be implemented in cities such as Miami, Hialeah, Doral, Homestead, Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville, Fort Myers, and Naples, among others.
However, Florida has a particularity: not the entire state uses the same time zone.
While most of its cities are in the Eastern Time Zone of the United States, locations in the far northwest, like Pensacola, use the Central Time Zone.
In Cuba, the time change has also been confirmed by the authorities. The Government of Havana announced on February 26th that daylight saving time will end on Sunday, November 1, 2026, when citizens will need to set their clocks back one hour to return to standard time. This information was reiterated in March by official media such as Juventud Rebelde, which related the implementation of daylight saving time to a better use of sunlight and energy savings.
In that case, the adjustment will be made at 1:00 AM, when the clocks should be set back to 12:00 midnight.
People who need to work during the early hours of Sunday, have scheduled flights, or important appointments should pay special attention to the adjustment to avoid confusion.
Why does Florida keep changing the time?
Although Florida has attempted to eliminate the time changes twice a year, the measure remains in effect due to federal regulations.
In 2018, the state approved legislation known as the Sunshine Protection Act, with the intention of establishing daylight saving time permanently.
However, its implementation depends on the U.S. Congress modifying federal legislation to allow states to adopt that approach year-round.
On October 3rd, President Donald Trump publicly pressured Republican Senator Tom Cotton to support a legislative initiative aimed at eliminating the biannual time change.
The proposal aims to keep daylight saving time in effect for all twelve months of the year, preventing Americans from having to set their clocks forward and back each spring and fall.
However, as long as there is no change in federal legislation, Florida will have to continue following the schedule established for most of the country.
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