DST: Why It Breaks Meetings

Map daylight saving waves so your recurring calls survive March and October.

The DST problem stated plainly

Daylight saving time (DST) is a political rule layered on top of time zones. Countries pick their own start and end dates. Some have scrapped DST entirely, others reintroduce it every few years. When one region jumps and the other stays put, a perfectly synced meeting loses its overlap. Calendar software adjusts the local start time but seldom tells you that your colleague now sees the invite at 06:00. The result: missed stand-ups, cranky exec briefings, and on-call swaps that begin mid-sleep.

Treat DST the same way you would treat a major infrastructure change. Know when it lands, rehearse the risky weeks, and keep tooling nearby so you can show what changed instead of debating it on a call.

How to track the changeovers

Reference the official rules

The IANA tz database publishes the authoritative list of transitions. You do not need to parse it manually; the TimeyKit DST Planner reads those rules and plots them on a calendar. Load the plan for 2026 and you will see, for example, the United States moving clocks ahead on March 8 while the United Kingdom waits until March 29. That gap is where meetings break.

Build a per-team calendar

Start with the regions that host live calls. For a US-East, Berlin, Sydney trio, note:

The overlap windows shrink and expand at each stage. Writing the dates on a shared runbook keeps everyone aware that “standard time” is a moving target.

Examples from real teams

Example: Weekly incident review

Incident review happens every Wednesday at 15:00 London. The US site lead normally joins at 10:00 New York. For the three-week DST wave in March, London remains UTC+00:00 while New York moves to UTC-04:00. The call appears at 11:00 in the US for that span. Without notice, the facilitator thinks the American lead is absent. Logging the shift in the DST Planner avoids the blame game.

Example: APAC onboarding

A Singapore-based enablement team runs new-hire sessions with Melbourne peers. Singapore never changes clocks; Melbourne toggles between UTC+10:00 and UTC+11:00. During Australian summer the usual 2-hour difference becomes 3 hours. If the session stays at 09:00 Singapore, it shifts from 11:00 Melbourne to 12:00. The fix: use the Timezone tool to find the new overlap or rotate presenters for that quarter.

Designing resilient meeting cadences

Keep a shared Timezone link for every critical call. Name it after the meeting and drop it into the invite description. When DST approaches, open the link, toggle to the upcoming week, and copy a screenshot into the agenda. That thirty-second step eliminates back-and-forth threads about “wait, what time is this now?”

Another tactic is to anchor meetings in UTC. Set the invite to 16:00 UTC and let calendar clients present the local conversion. This works well for engineering ceremonies but may feel cold for clients, so pair it with a friendly translation in the invite body.

Try the tool

Use the DST Planner to see the entire season’s transitions and subscribe to the ICS feed. When you need day-to-day overlap detail, jump into the Timezone planner and drag through the calendar timeline to see how the slots shift.

FAQ

Why don’t calendars warn me before DST?
Most calendar clients assume you already know the rules. They only show a small banner. Embedding a DST Planner link in the invite keeps the warning front and center.
Can I disable DST entirely?
Only by switching everyone to UTC or by moving to regions without DST. Otherwise you must adapt each recurring meeting when local law changes the offset.
What about Southern Hemisphere teams?
Southern Hemisphere DST seasons run opposite the north. Expect October and April to be the risky months when only one side of the call flips clocks.
Do the rules change often?
Yes. Countries announce changes with little notice. Always verify the upcoming year inside the DST Planner or a trusted tz database release.

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