  We show that homogeneous lattice gauge theories can realize nonequilibrium
quantum phases with long-range spatiotemporal order protected by gauge
invariance instead of disorder. We study a kicked $\mathbb{Z}_2$-Higgs gauge
theory and find that it breaks the discrete temporal symmetry by a period
doubling. In a limit solvable by Jordan-Wigner analysis we extensively study
the time-crystal properties for large systems and further find that the
spatiotemporal order is robust under the addition of a solvability-breaking
perturbation preserving the $\mathbb{Z}_2$ gauge symmetry. The protecting
mechanism for the nonequilibrium order relies on the Hilbert space structure of
lattice gauge theories, so that our results can be directly extended to other
models with discrete gauge symmetries.
