IB and IGCSE Exam Timetables in the UAE: Sessions, Zones and Deadlines

There is a specific way that an IB exam timetable in the UAE goes wrong for a family, and it is not forgetfulness. It is that the timetable a parent finds first is usually the wrong one — the wrong board, the wrong series, the wrong administrative zone, or a provisional version that has since been revised. A UAE household can easily be holding three different qualifications at once across two children, each on a different calendar, and the internet will cheerfully serve up a timetable for a country they do not live in.

This guide sets out which examination sessions UAE students actually sit, which published timetable applies to your child's centre, when entries close relative to the papers, and how to build a revision plan backwards from a window rather than forwards from a wish. It covers the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme alongside Cambridge IGCSE and Pearson Edexcel International GCSE, because that is the real mix in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah households.

It also does something most pages in this category will not do: it refuses to restate dates that can be revised. You will find session structures, deadline ordering and planning arithmetic here. For the actual days, this guide tells you which official page to open and which version of it you need. That is not evasion — for one of the three boards covered here, using the wrong timetable version is explicitly a risk the board says it will not take responsibility for.

The IB Exam Timetable in the UAE: Which Exam Sessions Do UAE Students Actually Sit?

Two per board, and which two depends on the qualification rather than on the emirate. The IB Diploma Programme runs a May examination session and a November examination session. Cambridge International runs IGCSE, O Level and International A Level exams in a June series and a November series. Pearson Edexcel International GCSE exams are available in May/June and November each year.

For the overwhelming majority of UAE students the pattern is: the main sitting falls in the first half of the year, and the second session later in the year functions as the resit or off-cycle route. UAE schools run an academic year that ends in the summer, so a Diploma Programme cohort in Dubai sits the May session and a Year 11 IGCSE cohort sits the summer series. The November and autumn series are sat by schools on a southern-hemisphere calendar, by students resitting, and by private candidates.

Look at which months are not lit. February is dark for a UAE candidate, and so is the first half of March for anything other than Checkpoint - which is the whole of the next section, stated as a calendar before it is stated as a warning.

The reason to hold this table in mind is that mixed-board households are the norm here, not the exception. A family can have one child sitting Cambridge IGCSE in the June series, a second sitting Pearson Edexcel International GCSE in May/June at a different school, and an older child in the Diploma Programme on the IB's May session. Those are three separate timetables from three separate publishers, and the only thing they share is that none of them should be taken from a summary.

Why Doesn't the February/March Cambridge Timetable Apply in the UAE?

Because the February/March series is offered to India only. If you have found a Cambridge timetable with exams in late February and March and an entry deadline in the previous November, you are reading India's series, and it does not apply to a candidate at a UAE centre. UAE candidates sit the June and November series.

This is worth stating as flatly as possible, because it is the single most consequential timetable error in this market. The February/March series is a real series with real published dates, which is exactly what makes it dangerous: the page looks correct, the dates look specific, and nothing about it announces that it is country-restricted. A parent in Dubai who builds a revision plan around a March exam window has mis-scheduled an entire year, and will discover the error at the point where it cannot be fixed.

Nothing on the India series page announces that it is country-restricted, which is exactly why it is the most expensive search result in this market. If your household has moved from India, our guide to switching from CBSE to IB in Dubai covers the other assumptions that travel with the family.

How the mistake happens, in practice:

• Search results do not know where you live. A query about an IGCSE timetable returns the series that is most written about, and the India series generates a very large amount of content.
• Tutoring companies copy each other's dates. A page that restates a window rather than linking the board gets it wrong once and then it is repeated across the market. This has happened in UAE tutoring content at scale.
• Families moving from India carry the calendar with them. A household that relocated from Mumbai or Bengaluru to Dubai has lived through a February/March series and reasonably assumes it continues.
• The resit assumption runs backwards. Families look for the nearest retake opportunity and find the one that is nearest in India rather than the one available to them, which for a Cambridge candidate in the UAE is the November series.

If you take one operational rule from this guide: your child's series is determined by their examination centre, and the authority on it is the centre's exams officer, not a search result.

What Are Cambridge Zone Timetables, and Why Do They Matter So Much?

Because a Cambridge exam does not sit at the same time everywhere in the world, and the board publishes a different timetable version for each region. Every Cambridge centre is allocated to one of six administrative zones, and Cambridge states that it is essential to use the correct version of the timetable for your zone. It also states that it cannot accept responsibility for candidates who miss an exam as a result of using the wrong zone timetable.

Read that last sentence again, because it is unusual. Most of what goes wrong in exam administration is recoverable through a process. This is the board saying in advance that this particular error is not its problem. A candidate who turns up at the wrong time because the household printed the wrong zone's timetable has missed the paper, and there is no appeal built on the board's error, because the board did not make one.

The third number is the unusual one. Most exam-administration errors are recoverable through a process; this one is pre-emptively disclaimed, so the two-minute question to your exams officer is the cheapest insurance in the whole exam year.

This is also why you will not find a table of exam days on this page. Any date we printed would be a copy of the board's, it would be a snapshot, and for a Cambridge candidate it could be the wrong zone's snapshot. Boards publish provisional timetables well ahead of a series, which is precisely the period when a restated date is most likely to go out of step with reality. Link, open, read the live version.

When Do Exam Entries Actually Close?

Months before the papers, which is the ordering that catches families out. Entries are made by the examination centre, not by the family, and the centre's internal cut-off is earlier still — the school needs its own margin before it submits to the board. So the decision window on a subject, a tier, or a resit closes long before anyone feels ready to make it.

Worked through with real, verifiable dates from one board: Pearson Edexcel International GCSE results for the June 2026 series went to centres on 19 August 2026 and to students on 20 August 2026, and results from the November 2025 series reached students on 22 January 2026. Work backwards from those two facts. A result in late August means papers in the early summer, which means entries closed in the preceding winter or early spring. A result in late January means papers in the autumn, which means entries closed around the start of that autumn term.

The consequence is a planning rule rather than a date: by the time a student knows how a subject is going, the entry decision for the next available series has usually already been made. Which is why the entry conversation belongs in the term before, not in the term of.

The last line is the one that governs your family. A result in late August places entries in the preceding winter, and your centre's own cut-off sits weeks earlier still - so the subject, tier and resit decisions are made in a term when nobody feels ready to make them. Our IB May session exam preparation and IGCSE May/June exam preparation pages are built around that ordering, and IGCSE resit tutoring in Dubai around the decision that follows a result.

Get the two dates that matter in writing from your centre: the entry deadline and the centre's own internal cut-off. The second is the one that actually governs your family's decision, and it is the one no board publishes. Our pages on IB May session exam preparation and IGCSE May/June exam preparation set out how preparation maps onto that ordering.

How Do You Read a Personal Timetable for Clashes and Back-to-Back Papers?

Line by line, with a calendar open, looking for three specific things rather than reading it as a list of dates. The personal timetable — the candidate-specific one your centre issues, not the board's general version — is where the real problems live, and they are invisible until someone lays the papers out in order.

Look for these three:

1. 1Two papers on the same day. Common, survivable, and it changes revision priorities in the final fortnight entirely. A student with a morning and an afternoon paper on one day needs to have practised sustained concentration across a full day, not just across one paper.
2. 2Consecutive days across the hardest subjects. The worst version is two Higher Level papers on back-to-back days, which removes the recovery day that most revision plans quietly assume exists. If this appears on the timetable, the plan has to front-load one of the two subjects weeks earlier.

The fourth line is the one that turns a reading exercise into a check. A personal timetable and a zone timetable that disagree is a question for the exams officer that week, not a discrepancy to reason about at home.

1. 1A long gap, then a late paper. A subject sitting two weeks after everything else is the most commonly under-prepared paper in any series, because the student's attention has already moved on. Protect it explicitly, or it becomes the one grade that falls.

The late-paper problem deserves its own warning because it is counter-intuitive. Families assume the dangerous papers are the early ones, when the student is least warmed up. In practice the early papers get the benefit of peak revision intensity and peak anxiety. The paper that falls after a two-week gap gets neither, and by then the cohort has emotionally finished. Write that subject's final week into the plan before you write anything else.

Which is the opposite of how almost every revision plan is built. The early papers are over-prepared by the ordinary workings of panic; the late paper has to be protected deliberately, which is what IB past-paper practice scheduled against a personal timetable is for.

How Do You Plan Revision Backwards From the Exam Window?

Start at the window and count back, because the amount of time available is fixed and the amount of content is not. Planning forwards from today produces a schedule that runs out of weeks in the middle of a syllabus. Planning backwards from the window forces the honest conversation early, which is when it can still change the outcome.

The counting has four fixed points: the exam window, the final timetable, the mock window, and the entry deadline. Everything else is yours to arrange. The sequence that works, in our experience of running exam-term programmes, divides the available weeks into three unequal phases.

Phase one: content, and only content. This is the only phase in which learning new material improves a grade, and it must end decisively. A student still being taught new content four weeks before a paper is a student who will not have practised the paper. In a typical UAE school year the Diploma Programme content phase ends around the time of the mocks, and the mock result is the diagnostic that sets the rest of the plan.

Phase two: full papers with feedback, untimed first. Whole papers, not question sets, because the skill being built is stamina and question triage rather than topic recall. Untimed first so that the student finds out what they can do with unlimited time, which separates a knowledge gap from a speed gap — two problems with opposite remedies. Then timed, under genuine exam conditions, including the walk to the desk and the absence of a phone.

Phase three: components and logistics. The final fortnight targets the specific components where marks were being lost in phase two, protects any late paper, and settles the logistics: the zone-correct timetable, the room, the equipment, the travel time at the actual hour of the exam. In Dubai and Abu Dhabi that last item is not trivial — a morning paper and school-run traffic interact badly, and a student who arrives stressed has spent marks before opening the paper.

The loop matters as much as the order. A topic that fails in a timed paper in phase three re-enters at phase one rather than being revised again in the same way, which is why revision classes and IGCSE revision classes are scheduled against diagnosed weaknesses rather than against a syllabus order.

That ring is the honest version of "we still have four months". Just over a third of the run-in can absorb new content, and a student still being taught in the final month has spent the practice weeks on teaching. For the subjects where that bites hardest, see Mathematics Analysis and Approaches Higher Level and Cambridge IGCSE Mathematics 0580.

For families who want to see what this looks like as a structured programme rather than a principle, our mock exam preparation and past-paper practice pages set out the phase-two and phase-three work, and IGCSE mock exam preparation covers the equivalent at IGCSE level.

Where Do Ramadan and the UAE School Calendar Sit in the Exam Year?

In the middle of phase two, most years, and a revision plan that ignores it will fail in a predictable way. Ramadan moves earlier by roughly eleven days each year against the Gregorian calendar, so its position relative to a fixed spring exam window shifts across a student's time in the Diploma Programme — which means the plan that worked for an older sibling may not transfer.

What changes during Ramadan is not commitment but the shape of the day. School hours are shortened across the UAE, energy distributes differently, late evening becomes productive for many students while the late afternoon does not, and family and community obligations are real rather than optional. None of that reduces what a student can do over a month; it changes when they can do it.

Three adjustments that work, and one that does not:

• Move the heavy cognitive work to the part of the day that is actually strong for that student. For many fasting students that is later in the evening, after iftar, or early before the school day. Scheduling a demanding Higher Level session at 4pm because that is when it has always been is the most common error.
• Shorten sessions and keep the frequency. Three shorter sessions beat one long one during a fasting month, and continuity matters more than volume for retention.
• Use the month for full-paper reading and technique rather than first-time learning. Reviewing a marked paper is less cognitively costly than meeting a new topic.
• What does not work: treating the month as a planned gap and promising to catch up afterwards. The weeks after Ramadan are already allocated to timed papers. A month of deferred content arrives into a phase that has no room for it.

The one row with a dash is the one families get wrong, because deferred content arrives into the timed-paper phase that has no room for it. Our Ramadan study schedule for IB students sets the month out week by week, and our IB summer holiday study plan for the UAE covers the other block of the year families plan badly.

The other UAE calendar features worth mapping are the long summer break, which falls either side of a summer results release and is when expatriate families travel, and the winter break, which lands in the middle of a Diploma Programme student's internal assessment season. Our Ramadan study schedule for IB students goes through the month in detail, and our results day guide for the UAE covers the summer release and why a scattered family needs a plan agreed before term ends.

Can You Sit IB or IGCSE Exams as a Private Candidate in the UAE?

For Cambridge and Pearson Edexcel qualifications, private candidate entry runs through an examination centre that accepts external candidates, and that centre then owns your entry, your zone-correct timetable and your results. For the IB Diploma Programme, the position is different and more restrictive, and it must be checked with the IB and with any school you are considering — the Diploma is delivered through authorised IB World Schools, and candidate registration runs through a school rather than being an individual transaction.

The practical advice is the same in both cases: start with the centre, not with the timetable. A private candidate's entire calendar is a function of which centre accepts them, which series that centre is entered for, and in the Cambridge case which administrative zone it sits in. Families sometimes spend weeks building a revision plan before securing a centre, and then find the centre's series does not match the plan.

Questions to ask a prospective centre, in order: do you accept external candidates for this qualification and this series; what is your internal entry cut-off; which Cambridge zone are you in; what are the fees and what do they cover; and will you issue a personal timetable to an external candidate. That fifth one is frequently overlooked and it is the document the student actually sits to.

Reverse that order and you get the common failure: weeks of revision planning against a window the accepting centre does not sit. For the preparation side once the centre is fixed, see IGCSE exam preparation in Dubai, IGCSE past-paper practice and IGCSE tutoring in Sharjah.

How Many Weeks of Tutoring Does an Exam Session Realistically Need?

It depends on which phase you are starting in, and the honest answer is that starting late changes what tutoring can achieve rather than just how much it costs. A student who starts sixteen weeks out can still close content gaps. A student who starts three weeks out can only improve execution on material they already know — which is sometimes worth a grade, and sometimes is not.

The three realistic starting points:

Sixteen weeks or more. Everything is available: re-teaching weak topics, building up to full papers, timed practice, component targeting. This is where a two-grade improvement is a reasonable goal for a motivated student, though no one can promise it.

Eight to ten weeks. Content work has to be surgical — the two or three topics that carry the most marks, not the syllabus. The bulk of the time goes to whole papers with feedback. A one-grade improvement is a sensible target.

Under four weeks. Execution only: timing, question triage, the specific components where marks are leaking, and the logistics. Useful, genuinely, but a provider who sells a two-grade jump at this point is selling hours.

Nobody should guarantee you a grade at any of those starting points, and we do not. What a plan can promise is that the weeks are allocated against the window rather than against a monthly subscription, and that an honest checkpoint around a quarter of the way in reports whether the target is still reachable.

The line falls away because the phases fall away, not because the hours do. Sixteen weeks buys re-teaching; four weeks buys timing and triage on material already known. If the window is short, our IB crash course in Dubai and IB retake tutoring in Dubai pages describe what that narrower job honestly contains, and our guide to the best time to start IB tutoring in Dubai argues the case for not arriving here at all.

How we teach this in the UAE, stated plainly. For families anywhere in the UAE — Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Al Ain, Sharjah or the northern emirates — IB Gram teaches online, one to one, over live video. We do not send tutors to homes in the UAE; in-home visiting tuition is an India-only service of ours. In exam term that model earns its place rather than merely being what we offer: a cancelled home visit in the final six weeks is a lost week that cannot be recovered, while a video lesson survives traffic, travel, a school trip and a relocation. Market rates for in-home tutoring in Dubai run roughly AED 180 to 500 an hour, with travel priced into the upper end, against roughly AED 150 to 300 for a qualified subject tutor online — but the scheduling reliability matters more than the gap in exam season. IB Gram holds no approval or accreditation from the IB, Cambridge, Pearson, KHDA, ADEK, SPEA or the Ministry of Education, and we do not claim any.

Row two is the one that decides it in the final six weeks. A fee difference is recoverable and a lost week before a paper is not, which is the whole case for the online model in this particular part of the year rather than in general.

What Changes Between the Main Session and the Second Session?

Everything about the surrounding structure, and almost nothing about the papers. The qualification is the same, the standard is the same, and a grade obtained in the second session is the same grade. What differs is that the student sitting the later series is usually doing it without a school scaffold — and that, not the exam, is what determines the outcome.

If a second session is on the table for your family, plan the structure before the subject matter. The content is already taught; the thing that has gone missing is the week-by-week obligation that a school provides for free. Our IB November session exam preparation and IGCSE October/November exam preparation pages are built around exactly that gap, and families in the capital can see the same work on our Abu Dhabi IB exam preparation and Abu Dhabi IB May session exam preparation pages. If a result has already landed and the second session is the live question, our IB results day guide for the UAE covers the fortnight in which that decision is actually made.

Frequently Asked Questions About IB and IGCSE Exam Timetables in the UAE

Hold that comparison while you read the answers below. Almost every question about a resit turns out to be a question about structure rather than about the paper, which is why the second-session plan is written before the subject matter is.

When are IB exams held for students in the UAE?

The IB Diploma Programme runs two examination sessions a year, May and November, and UAE schools overwhelmingly sit the May session because the local academic year ends in the summer. The exact dates for your cohort must come from your school's Diploma Programme coordinator or from the IB's own assessment pages at ibo.org — we do not print IB dates here, because a date restated on a commercial page goes stale without anyone noticing. The November session is the nearest resit route for a candidate who sat in May.

Do UAE students sit the Cambridge February/March exam series?

No. The Cambridge February/March series is offered to India only. UAE candidates sit the June and November series for IGCSE, O Level and International A Level. This is the most consequential timetable error in the UAE market, because the February/March series is real and its published dates look entirely authoritative — a parent in Dubai who plans around a March window has mis-scheduled a year. If a page shows you an IGCSE exam in late February or March with an entry deadline the previous November, you are reading India's series.

What is a Cambridge exam zone and how do I find mine?

Cambridge allocates every examination centre to one of six administrative zones and publishes a separate timetable version for each. Cambridge states that it is essential to use the correct version for your zone, and that it cannot accept responsibility for candidates who miss an exam after using the wrong zone timetable. Your centre's exams officer holds the zone — it is not something a parent can reliably infer. Download only that zone's timetable, and reconcile it against the personal candidate timetable your centre issues, which is the document the student actually sits to.

When do IGCSE exam entries close?

Months before the papers, and entries are made by the examination centre rather than by the family. The centre also runs its own internal cut-off, weeks earlier than the board deadline, because the school needs margin before submitting. That internal cut-off is the date that actually governs your family's decision, and no board publishes it — ask your exams officer for both in writing. Work it backwards from results: Pearson Edexcel International GCSE June 2026 results reached students on 20 August 2026, which places that series' entries in the preceding winter or early spring.

What is the difference between a provisional and a final exam timetable?

A provisional timetable is published ahead of a series so that centres and families can plan, and it can be revised before the final version is confirmed. Pearson publishes provisional timetables ahead of each International GCSE series, which is exactly why a date restated on a third-party page is unreliable: the restatement captures one version and never updates. Always open the board's own timetable page, note whether the PDF you have is provisional or final, and re-check it in the month before the window rather than trusting an autumn download.

When do Pearson Edexcel International GCSE exams take place?

Pearson Edexcel International GCSE exams are available in May/June and November each year, and UAE school cohorts typically sit the May/June window with November serving as the resit and private-candidate route. The verifiable turnaround history is useful for planning: June 2026 results went to centres on 19 August 2026 and to students on 20 August 2026, while November 2025 results reached students on 22 January 2026. For the actual exam days, open the live timetable on qualifications.pearson.com rather than any summary, since provisional timetables are revised.

How far in advance should revision start before an exam session?

Count backwards from the window rather than forwards from today, and the answer becomes concrete. Sixteen weeks or more allows content gaps to be closed, which is the only phase where new learning changes a grade. Eight to ten weeks allows surgical content work on the two or three highest-value topics plus whole papers with feedback. Under four weeks is execution only — timing, question triage and the leaking components. Starting late does not just cost less preparation; it changes what preparation can achieve.

How do I handle two exams on the same day or back-to-back papers?

Find them before the final fortnight by reading the personal timetable line by line with a calendar open. Two papers in one day require practice at sustained concentration across a full day, not just across one paper. Two Higher Level papers on consecutive days remove the recovery day most revision plans silently assume, so one of the two must be front-loaded weeks earlier. The most under-prepared paper in any series is the one sitting two weeks after everything else, because attention has already moved on — protect its final week first.

How should Ramadan be factored into an exam revision plan?

By changing when the work happens, not how much. School hours shorten across the UAE, and for many fasting students the strong part of the day moves to the evening after iftar or to early morning, so a demanding Higher Level session fixed at 4pm is the common error. Shorten sessions and keep the frequency, since continuity matters more than volume for retention, and use the month for reviewing marked papers and technique rather than meeting new topics. Ramadan moves roughly eleven days earlier each year, so an older sibling's plan may not transfer.

Can my child sit IGCSE exams as a private candidate in the UAE?

For Cambridge and Pearson Edexcel qualifications, yes, through an examination centre that accepts external candidates — and that centre then owns the entry, the zone-correct timetable and the results. Start with securing the centre, not with building a revision plan, because the whole calendar is a function of which centre accepts the candidate and which series it is entered for. Ask whether they take external candidates for that series, their internal entry cut-off, their Cambridge zone, the fees, and whether they will issue a personal timetable. The IB Diploma is different: registration runs through an authorised IB World School, so check with the IB and the school directly.

Is a November resit grade worth the same as a main-session grade?

Yes — the qualification, the standard and the grade are the same. What differs is the structure around the student. A main-session candidate has timetabled lessons, mocks, teacher-set deadlines and a whole cohort revising in parallel. A November candidate usually has none of that, and the solitude is the main risk factor rather than the content, which is already taught. So plan the structure before the subject matter: weekly obligations, written deadlines and accountability are what the school was providing for free.

Where should I get exam dates if not from a tutoring website?

From three places only: your school's exams officer or Diploma Programme coordinator, the board's own live timetable page, and the personal candidate timetable your centre issues. For Cambridge that means cambridgeinternational.org in your centre's zone version; for Pearson, the exam timetables pages on qualifications.pearson.com; for the IB, your coordinator against ibo.org. A tutoring site — including this one — can tell you the session structure, the deadline ordering and how to plan against a window, but it should never be the source of a day you act on.

The short version: take the structure from a guide, the dates from the board

The short version. UAE candidates sit the IB May and November sessions, Cambridge June and November series, and Pearson Edexcel May/June and November windows. The February/March Cambridge series is India-only. Cambridge zone versions matter enough that the board disclaims responsibility for a candidate who uses the wrong one. Entries close months before the papers, and your centre's internal cut-off is earlier still. Plan backwards from the window, in three phases, and finish content before timed papers begin.

The one rule. Take the session structure from a guide; take the dates from the board, your centre and your coordinator. If you want help building the plan against your own window, our IB tutoring and IGCSE tutoring pages explain how the online, one-to-one model runs, and our IGCSE exam timetable guide for the UAE covers the IGCSE calendar in its own right.