Royal Holloway Term Dates 2026/27 and 2025/26

Royal Holloway, University of London runs three terms a year - Autumn, Spring and Summer. Below are the official dates for the current 2025/26 year and the upcoming 2026/27 year, with how the three-term structure works and where exams and holidays sit inside it.

At a glance

Royal Holloway's three terms for the current 2026/27 year:

• Autumn term: Monday 21 September to Friday 11 December 2026.
• Spring term: Monday 11 January to Thursday 25 March 2027.
• Summer term: Monday 26 April to Friday 11 June 2027.

Teaching happens across the Autumn and Spring terms, the main exam period sits inside the Summer term, and the Christmas and Easter holidays fall in the gaps between the terms. Most departments also run a reading week partway through each teaching term. The previous 2025/26 dates are further down.

Term dates 2025/26

• Autumn term: Monday 22 September to Friday 12 December 2025.
• Spring term: Monday 12 January to Thursday 2 April 2026.
• Summer term: Tuesday 5 May to Friday 12 June 2026.
• Winter graduation: Monday 15 to Friday 19 December 2025.
• Summer graduation: Monday 20 to Thursday 30 July 2026.

Term dates 2026/27

• Autumn term: Monday 21 September to Friday 11 December 2026.
• Spring term: Monday 11 January to Thursday 25 March 2027.
• Summer term: Monday 26 April to Friday 11 June 2027.
• Winter graduation: Monday 14 to Thursday 17 December 2026.
• Summer graduation: Monday 19 to Friday 30 July 2027.

Reading week

The Autumn and Spring terms each carry ten weeks of teaching, and many departments put a reading week after the first five. In the Autumn term that puts it around the sixth week of term, so roughly the back half of October in a normal year; in the Spring term it lands around mid-February. No teaching runs that week, and nobody asks you to account for how you spent it.

Two things to be clear about. First, reading week is set by your department, not by the university, so it is not on the official term-dates page and it does not have to fall in the same week as your friends' on another course. Some departments do not run one at all. Second, it is not a holiday week in any administrative sense - halls stay open, the campus keeps running, and coursework deadlines are often deliberately placed just after it.

Your department confirms its reading week at the start of the course, and once it is confirmed it shows as a gap in your teaching timetable. Subscribing to your timetable rather than re-checking it is the easiest way to see that gap coming, since the empty week simply appears in your own calendar.

Move-in and arrival dates

Your move-in date is not the same as the term start date, and it is not set by the term-dates page. New undergraduates in halls normally arrive over the weekend before the Autumn term starts, so for 2026/27 that means the days before Monday 21 September 2026, with Welcome Week filling the run-up to the first Monday.

Exact arrival days vary by hall and are staggered deliberately to keep the car parks moving, so your own date comes from your accommodation offer and arrival pack rather than from any general rule. What happens once you are there - registration, the freshers fair, societies - is covered in the Welcome Week guide, and the halls guide covers which hall is which.

How the three-term year works

Royal Holloway splits the academic year into three terms rather than two semesters. Most modules are taught across the Autumn and Spring terms, and the Summer term is largely given over to exams and assessment rather than new teaching.

• Autumn term: the year starts here. Undergraduate offer holders usually arrive a few days before the first Monday for Welcome Week, so your move-in date may be earlier than the term start date above. Check your arrival pack.
• Spring term: teaching continues from where the Autumn term left off. There is a break over Christmas and New Year between the two terms.
• Summer term: mainly exams and assessment. Postgraduate students do not get a summer vacation in the same way, so their year runs on past the undergraduate Summer term depending on when their course started.

Exams and assessment

The main exam and assessment period sits inside the Summer term. Some modules also have in-course assessments or January exams inside the Spring term, so the exact dates you sit depend on the modules you take. The published term-dates page gives the term boundaries, not your personal exam timetable.

Your own exam dates, rooms and deadlines come from your personal timetable in the student intranet, not from the term-dates page. Once your exam schedule is out, use the campus map in RHUL Mobile to find your exam venue and the walking route to it from your hall.

Holidays and vacation periods

The holiday periods sit in the gaps between the three terms rather than being listed as terms of their own:

• Christmas vacation: between the end of the Autumn term and the start of the Spring term. In 2026/27 that is from Friday 11 December 2026 to Monday 11 January 2027, and in 2025/26 it ran from Friday 12 December 2025 to Monday 12 January 2026.
• Easter vacation: between the end of the Spring term and the start of the Summer term. In 2026/27 that is from Thursday 25 March to Monday 26 April 2027, a notably long break, and in 2025/26 it ran from Thursday 2 April to Tuesday 5 May 2026.
• Summer vacation: after the Summer term ends. For undergraduates the long vacation runs from the end of the Summer term through to the start of the next Autumn term.

Bank holidays such as Easter Monday and the early May bank holiday fall inside these vacation periods, so they do not usually clash with teaching. Halls of residence contract dates follow the term structure but are not identical to it, so check your accommodation contract separately if you are planning to move out or stay over a vacation.

Planning around term dates

Term dates decide when campus is busy and when the student events calendar fills up. Freshers' events cluster around the start of the Autumn term, and the biggest run of society and Students' Union events follows the teaching weeks rather than the vacations. You can see what is on and when in the events feature in RHUL Mobile, which keeps the Students' Union and society calendar in one place.

If you are arriving for the first time, the campus map works offline and routes you door to door from any campus entrance to your hall or your first lecture, which is handy on a busy arrivals weekend.

Always confirm against the official page

Universities do occasionally adjust dates, and this guide was last checked on the date shown above. Before you book travel, accommodation or anything that depends on an exact date, confirm against the official Royal Holloway term-dates page: royalholloway.ac.uk/about-us/more/term-dates. The dates above are taken from that page, but it is the authoritative source if the two ever disagree.