EgBride Travel would like to bring your attention to a very important topic.
Egypt is set to officially switch to winter time on Thursday, October 31, 2024, by turning the clocks back by 60 minutes. This change was approved by the Egyptian government as part of Law No. 24 of 2023.
Egypt observes summer time between the last Friday in April and the last Thursday in October. The clocks are changed from UTC+02:00 to UTC+03:00. The change occurs one second after 23:59:59 on Thursday to become 01:00:00 on the last Friday in April shortening the day to 23 hours. Summer time ends one second after 23:59:59 to become 23:00:00 on the last Thursday of October lengthening the day to 25 hours.
Daylight saving time (DST) has been started in Egypt on 28 April 2023 at 00:00 UTC+2:00 and ended on 26 October 2023, thus making it the only African country using DST as of 2024.
The British first instituted summer time in Egypt in 1940, during the Second World War. The practice was stopped after 1945, but resumed 12 years later, in 1957.
Before the revolution in January 2011, the government was planning to take a decision to eliminate summer time in 2011 before President Hosni Mubarak’s term expired in September 2011. The transitional government did so on 20 April 2011.
Under the cloak that daylight saving time would save energy, the Egyptian government decided on 7 May 2014 to reinstate summer time with an exception for the holy month of Ramadan (the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, observed by Muslims as a month of fasting). In April the next year, a poll was held on whether to apply summer time or not. Following the results, the government decided on 20 April to temporarily cancel summer time, to make the necessary amendment to the laws and asked the ministers to work on a study to determine the probability of applying DST in coming years or not. The ministry of electricity assured that the achieved electricity savings from applying summer time is not of any tangible effect. In March 2023, the Egyptian Government announced it would be restoring DST, starting in April and ending in October.
