WA School Holidays 2026: Complete Calendar & Term Dates

WA school holidays 2026, taken directly from the Department of Education’s own term dates page: Term 1 runs Monday 2 February to Thursday 2 April. Term 2 is Monday 20 April to Friday 3 July. Term 3 is Monday 20 July to Friday 25 September. Term 4 is Monday 12 October to Thursday 17 December.

Western Australia’s own calendar page labels the gaps between terms simply as “Break” rather than “school holidays” — there’s no separate, narrower holiday label the way NSW publishes one. So the dates below are the direct term-to-term gaps, which is also the most accurate way to state them.

WA school terms 2026 — the full table

The four breaks

The summer figure comes from the Department’s own confirmed 2027 dates — Term 1 2027 starts Monday 1 February — rather than a guess, since WA’s page doesn’t separately label a “summer holidays” range the way it does the mid-year breaks. The rest of 2027 is confirmed too: Term 2, 26 April to 2 July; Term 3, 19 July to 24 September; Term 4, 11 October to 16 December. The Department also flags that Monday 26 April 2027 is expected to be a public holiday in lieu of Anzac Day, which falls on a Sunday that year.

WA’s page doesn’t publish specific pupil-free or student-free day dates centrally — its own guidance is to “check your school schedule for planned development days,” meaning, like Victoria, these are set locally rather than on a single statewide calendar.

Catholic, independent and other non-government schools

Everything above is the WA public school calendar. Catholic and independent schools set their own dates rather than automatically following it — 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 Western Australia compares with other states

Every state and territory sets its own school calendar independently, so WA’s dates won’t line up exactly with anywhere else — typically by a few days to two weeks at each term boundary. WA shares its Term 3 start date (20 July) and finish date (25 September) with South Australia this year, but its Term 1 and Term 2 boundaries differ from every other state. If you’re coordinating travel with family interstate, check that state’s own page rather than assuming: New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, and the ACT.

Public holidays around WA's school terms in 2026

Worth knowing if you’ve moved from another state: WA observes King’s Birthday in late September, not June like most of the rest of the country — so if you’re used to a mid-year King’s Birthday long weekend, it doesn’t apply here.

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.
• Pupil-free days are set school by school in WA — check your own school’s calendar rather than assuming a statewide date, since there isn’t one published centrally.
• Summer is the break to book earliest for, since every WA family is trying to travel in the same window.

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.

Frequently asked questions