World's Timekeepers Vote on October 15 to End Leap Seconds in 2027 and Call for a Clock for the Moon

The world's timekeepers voted on Thursday, October 15, to stop adding leap seconds to the clock. Meeting in Versailles, France, the 28th General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) adopted a resolution that makes Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) run continuously from May 20, 2027, and lets civil time drift up to one full hour away from the Sun before anyone adjusts it again. In a second resolution the same afternoon, the conference called for an international reference time for the Moon, because clocks there do not tick at the same rate as clocks on Earth.

What was decided

Since 1972, UTC, the time behind every phone, GPS receiver and stock exchange in the United States, has been kept within one second of UT1, the time told by the Earth's actual rotation. Whenever the planet's spin lagged too far behind atomic clocks, a leap second was inserted, 27 times in all, the last at the end of December 2016. The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service confirmed in July that none will be added this December either, according to IERS Bulletin C 72.

Resolution 5 of the 28th CGPM, titled "On the technical actions needed to ensure the continuity of UTC," ends that practice. It decides that "continuous UTC will become effective on 20 May 2027" and raises the permitted gap between clock time and Earth-rotation time from one second to 3,600 seconds, a full hour, which the text says will keep UTC continuous "for several centuries," according to the resolution published by the BIPM. The conference had already agreed in November 2022 to make the change by 2035; Thursday's vote moved it forward by eight years.

The reason for the hurry is the Earth itself. Recent shifts in the planet's rotation led a March 2025 workshop of the time-frequency committee and the IERS to estimate a 30 percent probability that a negative leap second, one removed rather than added, would be needed by 2035. None has ever been applied, and the resolution calls it "high-risk." Dr. Noël Dimarcq, president of the Consultative Committee for Time and Frequency, said in his statement at the close of the meeting that the decision ends leap-second discontinuities "after about 30 years of debate."

A time for the Moon

The second decision of the afternoon reaches farther. Resolution 6 notes that space agencies are building navigation and timing systems for the Moon and that using Earth's UTC there directly would be "greatly complicated" by general relativity, since a clock on the lunar surface runs at a different rate than one on Earth. The International Astronomical Union defined a Lunar Coordinate Time, TCL, in 2024; the conference now asks the BIPM, national metrology institutes and space agencies to turn it into a working time scale measured against UTC, while warning against a "proliferation" of competing lunar clocks, according to the text of Resolution 6.

A third resolution prepares a new definition of the second itself, based on optical clocks, for a vote in 2030. Dr. Wynand Louw, president of the International Committee for Weights and Measures, called the continuous-UTC decision a "major technical highlight" of the meeting. Nothing changes for anyone's wristwatch on May 20, 2027; the only visible effect is that the 61-second minute will never come again.

What it means spiritually

Facts first: this is an engineering decision about how computers count, taken by metrologists, and it will make no difference you can see. Everything below is interpretation.

The quiet truth inside the resolution is one that sky-watchers have always known: the clock on your wall has not told solar time for a long while. Thursday's vote simply stops pretending that the atomic second and the turning Earth are the same thing. For a practice built on the Wheel of the Year, that is a reminder rather than a loss. The equinox happens when the Sun crosses the celestial equator, not when a phone says it does; solar noon in Denver or Dallas is whenever your shadow is shortest, and our guide to the best time for a spell has always leaned on moonrise, sunrise and the planetary hours, none of which a committee can move. The drift the resolution permits is an invitation to look up again, as the Vedic sunrise rite Agnihotra insists, and to time your work by the sky rather than by the second.

And then there is the Moon. Lunar traditions have claimed for millennia that the Moon keeps its own time, and on Thursday the institution that defines the second agreed, for reasons of physics rather than poetry. "As above, so below" turns out to need a footnote. The Hunter's Moon on October 26 will rise on exactly the schedule it always has.

What you can do now

• Expect nothing on May 20, 2027. No clock will jump; a correction that happened 27 times since 1972 will simply never happen again.
• Find your real solar noon. A sun calculator, or a stick in the ground at midday, shows how far your clock already sits from the Sun. Use that moment, not 12:00, for solar work.
• Mark the next real clock change. US daylight saving time ends on Sunday, November 1, 2026; see our guide to an evening practice through early darkness.
• Time the Moon by the sky. Moonrise and the phase in your window are the lunar clock that matters. Every full moon through 2027 is in our full moon calendar.
• Keep the Wheel anchored to the Sun. All eight 2027 sabbat dates in US time are in our Wheel of the Year 2027.

Pairs well with: Sagrada Madre Sun Cosmos Incense, citrus ritual sticks for solar hours and Sunday work, when the real Sun, not the clock, says noon.

Sources

• BIPM, "Resolution 5 of the 28th CGPM (2026): On the technical actions needed to ensure the continuity of UTC," adopted October 15, 2026, doi:10.59161/CGPM2026RES5E. bipm.org
• BIPM, "Resolution 6 of the 28th CGPM (2026): On the definition of an international lunar reference time scale and its traceability to UTC," October 15, 2026, doi:10.59161/CGPM2026RES6E. bipm.org
• BIPM, "Statement by the CCTF President" (Noël Dimarcq) and "Statement by the CIPM President" (Wynand Louw), 28th CGPM, Versailles, October 15, 2026. bipm.org · 28th CGPM overview and resolutions
• IERS, "Bulletin C 72," Paris, July 6, 2026 (UTC−TAI = −37 s since January 1, 2017; no leap second at the end of December 2026). iers.org
• EarthSky, "No more leap seconds! Timekeeping is officially changing," October 16, 2026. earthsky.org
• Questions about an order or a product: 28@templeofdesire.com

Cover image: a sundial at dusk beneath a crescent moon, generated by Temple of Desire to illustrate the story; it does not show the Versailles meeting. The spiritual readings in this article are tradition and lived practice, not scientifically proven.