The IB timeline
Two sets of dates, and confusing them is the expensive mistake.
You will almost certainly never meet an IB date. Your teacher has to mark, moderate and upload your work before the IB's deadline, so their internal one runs weeks or months earlier. Real school calendars put final EE drafts in September or October of DP2 against an IB date of 15 March.
The dates below are the IB's. Ask your coordinator for your school's. Those are the ones that bind you, and they differ at every school.
May 2027 session
| Date | Set by | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| by 1 Sep 2026 | IB | TOK prescribed titles released. This one is student-facing |
| 15 Nov 2026 | IB | Registration deadline for the session |
| 15 Jan 2027 | IB | Late registration closes; eCoursework upload window opens |
| 29 Jan 2027 | IB | Six-month retake registration, at the lowest fee |
| 15 Mar 2027 | IB | Extended Essay, TOK essay and other early components due from schoolsYour school's date is earlier, usually much earlier |
| 20 Apr 2027 | IB | Internal Assessment marks, predicted grades, the moderation sample and TOK exhibition marksAlso the withdrawal deadline |
| 30 Apr 2027 | IB | Arts external components: visual arts, music, film, dance, theatre |
| 23 Apr – 18 May 2027 | IB | Examinations |
| ~6 Jul 2027 | IB | Results to students (expected from the usual pattern, not yet published) |
| 15 Sep 2027 | IB | Remark deadline, requested by your school and not by you |
November 2026 session
| Date | Set by | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 15 Sep 2026 | IB | Extended Essay, TOK essay and early components due from schools |
| 20 Oct 2026 | IB | Internal Assessment marks and TOK exhibition; withdrawal deadline |
| 23 Oct – 13 Nov 2026 | IB | Examinations |
| 16 Dec 2026 | IB | Results released to schools, 21:00 GMT |
| 17 Dec 2026 | IB | Results to students from 03:00 GMT, unless your school sets otherwise |
| 2 Jan 2027 | IB | Full remark service opens; deadline 15 Mar 2027 |
What your school sets, and roughly when
These vary enormously. The pattern across the school calendars we looked at:
- TOK exhibition: summer of DP1
- EE research question: November of DP1 to February of DP2
- First full EE draft: June to September
- Final EE: October to January of DP2
- Science IAs: across the spring of DP2
If your school publishes a chart, that chart beats everything on this page.
The collision nobody warns you about
If you are applying to university in the same year, your EE endgame and the 15 October UCAS deadline for Oxbridge and medicine land within a few weeks of each other. Worse, the predicted grades your whole application rests on are generated from Internal Assessments you are still writing.
October of DP2 is the tightest month of the two years and the one people plan for least. Every UCAS, Dutch, Irish and Nordic date is here →, and you can subscribe to them in your calendar.
Sources
IB dates from Diploma Programme Assessment procedures 2025, sections C3.2.2, C3.4.1 and C3.8.1, and the published May 2027 examination schedule. Checked 25 August 2026. The 2027 edition of the Assessment procedures was not available when this page was written; the component dates are written session-generically and have been stable, but confirm with your coordinator before relying on them. May 2027 results dates are the expected pattern rather than a published figure, and are marked as such above.