Daylight saving time changes in Alberta, Canada

Alberta uses the IANA time zone identifier America/Edmonton. The current local offset is UTC-6 / MDT.

Best Time to Call Alberta

Business hours in Alberta (9 AM-5 PM local time) fall at these local times elsewhere:

• Sao Paulo: 12:00 PM - 8:00 PM ( Partial overlap)
• Frankfurt: 5:00 PM - 1:00 AM (next day) ( Partial overlap)
• Johannesburg: 5:00 PM - 1:00 AM (next day) ( Partial overlap)
• Singapore: 11:00 PM - 7:00 AM (next day) ( Outside normal hours)
• Hong Kong: 11:00 PM - 7:00 AM (next day) ( Outside normal hours)
• Istanbul: 6:00 PM - 2:00 AM (next day) ( Partial overlap)
• Auckland: 3:00 AM (next day) - 11:00 AM (next day) ( Outside normal hours)

Times shown reflect current UTC offsets and may shift by up to an hour around daylight saving transitions.

Current Time in Cities of Alberta, Canada

About Time in Alberta

Two Referendums, Two Opposite Answers

Alberta first adopted Daylight Saving Time back in 1971, after voters approved it in a referendum with 61.5 percent support. For half a century after that, the province followed the same twice yearly clock change as most of Canada and the United States.

In 2021, Albertans were asked the opposite question, whether to drop the biannual change and stay on Daylight Saving Time permanently. The result was almost a coin flip, 50.24 percent voted no, against 49.76 percent voting yes, a gap of roughly 5,000 ballots out of over a million cast. The clock changes continued.

That result held for less than five years. In April 2026 the provincial government reversed course, citing changed circumstances in neighboring jurisdictions rather than a new vote. The Official Time Act received royal assent on May 14, 2026, and starting November 1, 2026, Alberta stops changing its clocks altogether, staying on what the province now calls Alberta Time, or ABT, all year round.

Why a Five Year Old Referendum Got Overturned

The government's own explanation was geographic rather than political. By early 2026, British Columbia had already committed to permanent daylight time, and Saskatchewan, Alberta's eastern neighbor, had never observed seasonal clock changes in the first place, staying on a fixed offset year round.

That left Alberta as the odd one out, falling in and out of sync with both neighbors twice a year. A provincial minister summed up the shift in reasoning by noting the province was effectively squeezed between two jurisdictions that no longer moved their clocks at all, making Alberta's own twice yearly change increasingly impractical for cross border business and travel.

The End of Lloydminster's Two Clock Problem

Few places in Canada felt the old system as directly as Lloydminster, the country's only city built to straddle a provincial border, split down the middle between Alberta and Saskatchewan since both provinces were created in 1905.

Saskatchewan has never observed Daylight Saving Time, so for decades Lloydminster's city government kept the entire city, both the Alberta side and the Saskatchewan side, on Alberta's seasonal schedule just to avoid having two different times inside one town. That worked, but it meant the city matched the rest of Saskatchewan only during summer, and sat a full hour ahead of it every winter.

Alberta's move to permanent Alberta Time removes that mismatch for good. Since Alberta will no longer fall back in November, and Saskatchewan was never changing its clocks to begin with, both halves of Lloydminster and the province around them settle onto the same fixed offset year round, closing a gap the city had been quietly working around for generations.

Frequently Asked Questions