No leap second planned for the end of 2026
The official time service expects no extra second this year, while the international time standard may continue to diverge from the Earth's rotation.
No leap second will be added to world time at the end of December 2026. The USNO has confirmed this on behalf of the international Earth rotation service.
A leap second is sometimes added to UTC, the global time standard, to keep it close to astronomical time, which is determined by the Earth's rotation. That rotation is not completely constant. The last leap second was added at the end of 2016.
There will be no noticeable change in everyday life. Clocks will simply continue running and time zones will remain the same. For computer systems, navigation, telecoms networks and financial infrastructure, however, an extra second can be troublesome because software often processes time in fixed sequences.
The international metrology community is therefore working towards a time scale in which leap seconds are no longer necessary. In 2022, the General Conference on Weights and Measures supported a change under which UTC will no longer be actively linked to the Earth's rotation by around 2035 at the latest. The International Telecommunication Union is continuing to develop the technical arrangements for this.
This does not mean that the link with the position of the Sun will suddenly disappear. The difference between clock time and astronomical time will gradually grow. The expectation is that this difference will only become significant for everyday use in tens or hundreds of years. For technical systems, the predictability of a continuous time scale carries greater weight.
The decision for 2026 is therefore not a formal abolition of the leap second. The Earth's rotation may be reassessed in the next six months, and the competent service could still announce a correction. However, the absence of a new second shows that the world has already been moving forward for years without a correction.
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The current decision for December 2026 comes from the official time service. The explanation of the future reform of UTC is based on ITU documentation and is presented as a long-term process.
- confirmed No leap second will be added at the end of December 2026. — This is stated in the current announcement by USNO/IERS. source
- confirmed The last leap second was added at the end of 2016. — USNO names December 2016 as the last added leap second. source
- confirmed International organisations are working towards a continuous UTC around 2035. — The ITU describes the 2022 decision and the further technical process. source
Editor's note
The absence of a leap second in December 2026 has been officially confirmed. The broader change to UTC is an international process with a target around 2035, not an abolition that has already been definitively introduced.Sources
- Leap Second Announcement — U.S. Naval Observatory
- Progress on time signals and frequency standard emissions — International Telecommunication Union
- What is the time argument for using IERS products? — IERS
More on this in Dutch media
- NU.nl — „tijd schrikkelseconde”
- De Telegraaf — „tijd schrikkelseconde”
- AD — „tijd schrikkelseconde”