ACT School Holidays 2026: Complete Calendar & Dates Guide

ACT school holidays 2026, taken directly from the ACT Government’s own term dates page: Term 1 ends Thursday 2 April. Term 2 runs Tuesday 21 April to Friday 3 July. Term 3 is Tuesday 21 July to Friday 25 September. Term 4 is Tuesday 13 October to Friday 18 December. Term 1’s start date is genuinely different depending on whether your child is new to their school — see below.

Two things make the ACT’s calendar different from every state we cover: it splits Term 1’s start date between new and continuing students, and its official page states term start/finish dates but doesn’t publish the holiday break ranges directly. The break dates below are calculated as the gap between one term finishing and the next one starting, and independently checked.

Why Term 1 has two start dates

The ACT Government splits Term 1 into a new-student start (Friday 30 January 2026) and a continuing-student start (Monday 2 February 2026) — a three-day gap that gives new students and their families time to settle in before the rest of the school returns. “New student” is defined more broadly than you might expect. It covers:

• All Kindergarten students, even if they attended the attached preschool the year before
• All Year 7 students, even if they attended the same school as a primary student
• All Year 11 students, even if they attended the same school as a high school student
• Anyone starting at a particular school for the first time, at any year level

In other words, a student moving from Year 6 to Year 7 at the same P–10 school still counts as “new” for Term 1 start purposes and begins on the earlier date. Confirm directly with your school which date applies to your child — don’t assume it’s the later, continuing-student date by default.

ACT school terms 2026 — the full table

The breaks between terms (calculated)

The ACT Government has already confirmed the full 2027 calendar: Term 1 starts Monday 1 February (new students) or Tuesday 2 February (continuing students) and ends Friday 9 April; Term 2 runs 28 April (a Wednesday start) to 2 July; Term 3 runs 20 July to 24 September; Term 4 runs 12 October to 17 December.

Colleges: exam periods set by each school

Like Tasmania, the ACT uses “college” for its senior secondary system, generally covering Years 11 and 12. The ACT Government doesn’t centrally publish college exam periods — these are “managed and communicated by individual schools,” so if you have a Year 11 or 12 student, check exam and finishing dates directly with their college, particularly around the end of Term 4.

Catholic, independent and other non-government schools

Everything above is the ACT public school calendar — the ACT Government’s own page notes explicitly that “private schools may have different dates.” Catholic Education and independent schools set their own calendars rather than automatically following the public school dates. Most stay reasonably close, 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.

How the ACT compares with NSW and other states

Many Canberra-region families live across the ACT/NSW border or have family in Sydney, so cross-border alignment matters more here than for most states. The ACT’s Term 1 end date (2 April) is close to but not identical to NSW’s (also 2 April in 2026, a rare exact match), while its Term 2 start (21 April, a Tuesday) differs by more than a week from most other jurisdictions. Every state and territory sets its calendar independently, so always confirm the specific state’s page rather than assuming alignment: Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, and Tasmania.

Public holidays around the ACT's school terms in 2026

The ACT has two public holidays most other states don’t observe by these names: Canberra Day (a March long weekend marking the city’s founding) and Reconciliation Day (a dedicated public holiday in early June, ahead of the King’s Birthday long weekend a week later).

Worth planning around: the ACT observes four public holidays across Term 2 alone once you count the Anzac Day substitute, Reconciliation Day and King’s Birthday — more concentrated instructional-day loss than most other states see in a single term.

Planning around the breaks

• Vacation care places fill early, especially for the 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.
• Confirm your child’s Term 1 start date directly with their school — “new student” status is broader than most families expect, and starting on the wrong date means an unnecessary day off or an unexpectedly empty classroom.
• Summer is the break to book earliest for, since every ACT family is trying to travel in the same window, often alongside neighbouring NSW families on similar dates.

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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