Although DNA polymerase θ (Pol θ) has been implicated in translesion synthesis and DNA repair, its physiological function remained elusive. Fernandez-Vidal et al. now report that DNA Pol θ has a role in the timing of DNA replication. They showed that in human cells DNA Pol θ is recruited to chromatin in early G1 and interacts with origin recognition complex subunit 2 (ORC2) and ORC4. siRNA-mediated depletion of DNA Pol θ led to increased chromatin loading of minichromosome maintenance (MCM) proteins, which assemble at ORC-binding sites, on chromatin in G1. Although DNA Pol θ depletion did not affect origin density, the authors found genome-wide changes in replication timing (both early to late and late to early) in a subset of replication domains, and overexpression of DNA Pol θ mostly delayed the replication of several domains. Together, these results suggest that DNA Pol θ controls human DNA replication timing by regulating MCM accumulation at pre-replication complexes.