QLD School Holidays 2026: Complete Calendar & Dates

QLD school holidays 2026, taken directly from the Department of Education’s own term dates page: Term 1 runs Tuesday 27 January to Thursday 2 April. Term 2 is Monday 20 April to Friday 26 June. Term 3 is Monday 13 July to Friday 18 September. Term 4 is Tuesday 6 October to Friday 11 December — Queensland finishes its school year earlier than most other states.

One correction worth making plainly: 69 state schools in remote and outback Queensland run a different, longer summer break — a full week earlier than everywhere else. If you’ve seen a Queensland school holidays page quoting winter break dates that look like another state’s, that’s a real error we found and fixed here; the details are below.

Queensland school terms 2026 — the full table

These are the Department of Education’s dates for Queensland state schools. Queensland runs the earliest Term 4 finish of any mainland state — most state schools are out for the year by 11 December.

The four holiday breaks

The Autumn and Spring breaks both run 17 days once you count the surrounding weekends; Winter is the shortest at 16. Summer is the outlier, at 46 days, covering Christmas, New Year and the lead-up to Australia Day.

Staff professional development days

Queensland schedules dedicated professional development days for staff, separate from the school holidays above — students don’t attend on these days.

Notice the Term 3 professional development day: Friday 4 September falls in the middle of Term 3, not at a term boundary. If your child’s school is closed that Friday and you weren’t expecting it, that’s why.

The 69 schools with a 7-week summer holiday

This is a genuine Queensland quirk that most calendars skip entirely. A defined group of remote and outback state schools get a 7-week summer holiday, starting a full week before the rest of Queensland — so their last day of Term 4 2026 and first day back for Term 1 2027 both shift earlier by about a week compared to the dates above.

The Department defines eligible schools two ways: any state school north of 16°S latitude and west of 144°E longitude (broadly, western Cape York and the Gulf), or a state school in one of a named list of outback towns. There are 69 schools in total, grouped across four regions:

• Far North Queensland (16 schools): including Aurukun, Cooktown, Croydon, Kowanyama, Lockhart, Mount Surprise, Pormpuraaw, Tagai State College and Western Cape College
• North Queensland (24 schools): including Mount Isa Central, Mount Isa School of the Air, Cloncurry, Doomadgee, Julia Creek, Normanton, Camooweal and Burketown
• Central Queensland (17 schools): including Longreach State School and State High School, Barcaldine, Blackall, Birdsville, Winton, Windorah and Jundah
• Darling Downs South West (10 schools): including Charleville State School and State High School, Cunnamulla, Quilpie State College and Thargomindah

If your child’s school is on this list, don’t rely on the term dates table above for the very start of Term 1 or the very end of Term 4 — check directly with the school, since the exact shifted dates aren’t broken out separately on the Department’s own summary page for 2026.

Catholic, independent and other non-state schools

Everything above is the Queensland state school calendar. Catholic and independent schools are not bound by it — each diocese or school sets its own dates. Most stay close to the state calendar, but differences of a week or more at Term 1’s start or Term 4’s finish are common. Treat this page as a reference point only if your child is at a Catholic or independent school, and check your own school’s calendar directly. We cover typical variations in our Catholic school holidays 2026 guide. If you’re in Toowoomba specifically, our Toowoomba guide covers local variations for that region.

How Queensland compares with other states

Every state and territory sets its school calendar independently, so Queensland’s dates won’t match anywhere else exactly. The clearest difference: Queensland finishes Term 4 on 11 December, noticeably earlier than NSW’s 17 December or Victoria’s 18 December, which means Queensland’s summer break is the longest of the mainland states in raw days, even though its mid-year breaks are fairly typical. If you’re coordinating travel with family interstate, check that state’s own page rather than assuming: New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, and the ACT.

Taking your child out of school during term time

For a short absence — a family trip of a few days — Queensland’s approach is straightforward: notify the school as soon as practical. The Department explicitly names “extended family vacation” as one of the acceptable reasons parents give when explaining an absence.

For anything longer, a formal Application for Exemption comes into play once an absence would run more than 10 consecutive school days. Key details:

• Apply, and get a decision, before the exemption period starts — not after the fact.
• The principal assesses whether it would be unreasonable, in the circumstances, to require the student to attend.
• There’s a statewide cap: a student’s total exemptions in a year cannot exceed 110 school days.

Talk to your child’s school directly and as early as you can once you know your travel dates — the exemption form is available through the school, and applying early avoids the process holding up your plans.

Getting these dates into your calendar

The Department of Education publishes an iCalendar feed covering term dates, holidays and professional development days, plus downloadable calendar PDFs for the school year and the teachers’ calendar. Subscribing to the official feed is more reliable for catching future changes than re-typing dates from any single article, including this one.

Planning around the breaks

• Vacation care places fill early, especially for the long summer break — ask your regular before/after-school-care provider what they run over each break as soon as dates firm up.
• The Child Care Subsidy applies to vacation care for eligible families the same way it applies to regular care — check your own rate through Services Australia rather than a flat figure quoted elsewhere.
• Queensland’s earlier Term 4 finish means Brisbane and the Gold Coast start filling with summer holiday traffic slightly ahead of NSW and Victoria’s school calendars — worth factoring in if you’re travelling south over the break.
• The Term 1 break overlaps Easter weekend most years, one of the busiest domestic travel periods nationally — book ahead regardless of the school calendar.

If you’re new to Australia and still working out how school enrolment, OSHC and the term system fit together day to day, our homepage indexes the rest of our settling-in guides.

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