ACCA Exam Dates 2026–2027: Every Confirmed Deadline — and the Four Sittings You Have Left

If you are looking up ACCA exam dates in mid-2026, you are not really looking up a calendar. You are looking up a countdown.

ACCA has confirmed that June 2027 is the final sitting of the Applied Skills and Strategic Professional exams. After that session, students move to the redesigned ACCA Qualification. That leaves exactly four sittings on the current structure: September 2026, December 2026, March 2027 and June 2027.

Every date below matters more than it did a year ago, because there are no longer unlimited attempts ahead of you.

Quick Answer: ACCA Exam Dates and Deadlines

• Next sitting: 7–11 September 2026. Standard entry closes Monday 27 July 2026; late entry closes 3 August 2026; results release 19 October 2026.
• Sittings remaining on the current structure: four — September 2026, December 2026, March 2027 and June 2027.
• December 2026: exam week and deadlines are not yet published by ACCA as of 15 July 2026. Based on ACCA's own scheduling pattern, expect 7–11 December 2026. Treat any site stating this as confirmed with caution.
• All ACCA deadlines fall at 23:59 UK time, not local midnight.
• BT, MA and FA are on-demand computer-based exams, bookable year-round — they are not tied to any sitting.

ACCA Exam Dates 2026: Confirmed Sessions

Source: ACCA Important Dates. All deadlines are 23:59 UK time.

Note the June 2026 row. ACCA offered no late entry at all for that session. This is the single most misreported fact in ACCA date guides, which routinely describe late entry as a standing feature of every sitting. It is not. Late entry is offered at ACCA's discretion, session by session.

Why “ACCA Exam Dates” Is Now a Countdown

ACCA's published transition timeline sets out the end of the current exam structure:

So the practical question is not “when is the next exam?” It is “how many papers do I have left, and do four sittings cover them?”

You can sit a maximum of four exams per session and eight per calendar year, so the cap is not what constrains you here — the June 2027 cut-off is.

If you will not finish by June 2027, that is not a failure. ACCA has stated that existing achievements will be recognised and that there will be no disadvantage in progression or cost to complete. Use ACCA's transition tool to input your expected passes and see how they carry across. The mistake is not transitioning — the mistake is discovering in April 2027 that you were going to.

The First-Monday Rule: Predicting ACCA Exam Dates Before ACCA Publishes Them

ACCA does not describe this rule anywhere, but its own published dates make it plain. Every session week runs Monday to Friday of the week containing the first Monday of the month.

Apply it forward:

This is why you should distrust several ACCA date guides currently ranking for this query. A number of them publish “1–5 December 2026” as a confirmed fact. 1 December 2026 is a Tuesday. ACCA has never run a session starting on a Tuesday. The date is not merely unconfirmed — it is structurally impossible.

Use the rule to book leave and plan revision. Do not use it to book flights. ACCA confirms timetable changes at least six months ahead, so December 2026 details should appear shortly.

ACCA September 2026 Timetable: Which Paper Sits on Which Day

This is ACCA's official published timetable for 7–11 September 2026.

Each paper runs once, on its fixed day. Two planning points fall straight out of this grid and are almost never stated explicitly:

1. APM and ATX are both on Wednesday. If you are choosing two Strategic Professional options, you cannot sit APM and ATX in the same session. The viable option pairs are AFM+AAA, AFM+APM, AFM+ATX, AAA+APM and AAA+ATX. If your plan was APM and ATX together, it does not work — and with four sittings left, discovering that in July costs you a session.
2. Your hardest day is Wednesday or Friday. Wednesday carries three papers, Friday carries three. A student sitting FM and AFM sits both on Friday 11 September. Check your combination against the grid before you pay, not after.

Local start times appear on the Exam Planner and your attendance docket.

The Deadlines Nobody Lists

Most ACCA date guides stop at entry, exam and results — three dates. ACCA publishes closer to fifteen per session. Here is the full stack for September 2026, all at 23:59 UK time.

The row that catches people: amending your entry closes on the same day as standard entry — 27 July. It does not run to the late deadline. If you enter for three papers now and want to drop one on 30 July, you cannot. Late entry lets you add; it does not reopen amendments. Decide your paper combination before 27 July, not after.

The second quiet one is additional support, also 27 July. Requests for extra time or access arrangements are not a formality you handle later — they close with standard entry.

Three Deadline Traps

1. “23:59 UK time” is not your midnight

Deadlines are UK time, and the UK changes clocks. The 27 July 2026 deadline falls in British Summer Time (UTC+1), so it lands at:

This works in your favour in July. It works against you in December: UK clocks return to GMT on 25 October 2026, so a late-October or November deadline for the December sitting lands an hour earlier in your local time than the July one did. Do not carry the July arithmetic into the December sitting.

2. Your annual subscription is an exam date

The annual subscription is due 1 January each year. Miss it and you can be removed from the register of students — at which point you are not sitting anything in March, regardless of a valid exam entry. ACCA invoices in November. For anyone targeting March or June 2027, 1 January 2027 is functionally an exam deadline.

3. March and September do not offer every variant

Only Applied Skills and Strategic Professional exams with limited variants run in March and September. All variants run in June and December, except Corporate and Business Law (LW) variants, which are taken as on-demand CBEs. If you are sitting a country variant, June and December may be your only realistic windows — which, with June 2027 as the final sitting, narrows your remaining options to December 2026 and June 2027.

What About the On-Demand Exams?

Business and Technology (BT), Management Accounting (MA) and Financial Accounting (FA) — plus seven Foundations exams and some LW variants — are on-demand computer-based exams. Book them directly with a licensed CBE centre, on almost any business day, independent of the March/June/September/December cycle.

If you are early in the qualification, this is your lever: clear the on-demand papers whenever you are ready and spend all four remaining fixed sittings on Applied Skills and Strategic Professional papers, which have nowhere else to go.