October 2026

The “time patch”—the leap second—which has been used for more than half a century to bridge the gap between atomic clock time and Earth’s rotational time, has been abolished. According to a resolution passed by the General Conference on Weights and Measures on the 15th, starting May 20, 2027, leap seconds will no longer be artificially added or subtracted, and Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) will be adopted continuously.

“During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, we will adhere to the principles of openness and integration, coordination and cooperation, compatibility and complementarity, and sharing of achievements, with the goal of expanding the Beidou industry to exceed 1 trillion yuan within five years and achieving new breakthroughs in the market-oriented, industrialized, and internationalized application of Beidou.”

Recently, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) completed the first-ever calibration and comparison verification of key Beidou parameters in China as part of its Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) time transfer standards. The Chinese Academy of Metrology precisely measured the technical parameters of the two BeiDou-3 signal frequencies—B1C and B2a—laying a solid foundation for global users to obtain “standard time” via BeiDou.