IGCSE November 2026 Exam Timetable: Confirmed Dates by Subject (Cambridge & Edexcel)

If you are retaking after a disappointing June result, or sitting IGCSE for the first time in the October/November series, the first thing you need is not a revision plan. It is a date. Specifically: which day is my paper, and how many weeks is that from now?

This page gives you the confirmed Cambridge November 2026 dates for the major IGCSE subjects, the Edexcel International GCSE window, and — the part most guides get wrong — the entry deadline that actually applies to you. There are three different ones, and picking the wrong one costs you the series.

The Cambridge November 2026 window

The series opens on Monday 28 September 2026 and closes on Friday 13 November 2026. That is roughly seven weeks of exams, but your personal timetable will be far shorter — most students sitting three or four subjects finish inside a fortnight.

The entry deadline trap

This is the single most misreported fact about the November series, so read it slowly. Cambridge publishes three relevant deadlines, and plenty of blogs collapse them into one:

Per-subject dates: the major IGCSE subjects

Cambridge publishes seven separate zone timetables rather than one global document. We compared them component by component: the calendar dates are identical across zones for virtually every syllabus — what changes is whether a paper sits in the morning or afternoon session. So the dates below are safe to plan around wherever you are; the session is not, and you should confirm it against the timetable your own centre uses.

Edexcel International GCSE: a different month entirely

If you sit Pearson Edexcel rather than Cambridge, almost nothing above applies to you. The Edexcel International GCSE November 2026 series runs Tuesday 27 October to Thursday 19 November 2026 — eighteen exam days, starting a month after Cambridge's series has already begun.

What happens after the exams

The November series has a long tail. Papers finish in mid-November, but results do not arrive until January, and the appeal window runs into the following spring.

If you are retaking to hit a university or sixth-form offer, that January results date is the number that matters. Work backwards from it: an institution that needs your grade confirmed in early January is fine, one that needs it in December is not, and one that will not wait past results day in August 2026 was never going to be solved by a November retake in the first place. Our resits and retakes guide walks through that decision properly, and the November series guide has the eight-week prep plan to go with these dates.

Turning a date into a plan

A timetable is only useful once you know what to do with the weeks in front of it. Two things are worth doing this week, before revision proper begins.

FAQ