Planning your study around the UK academic year

Short answer first: most UK universities run two semesters of about eleven or twelve teaching weeks. The first starts in the last week of September and ends with exams in December or January. The second runs from January to May and ends with exams in May or June. Resits fall in July or August. Oxford and Cambridge run three eight-week terms instead, and Scottish universities start earlier and take four years. The dates differ enough between institutions that a plan copied from a friend elsewhere will be wrong by weeks.

Every date below comes from a published 2026/27 page at the university named. Check your own calendar before you write anything in a diary, because these do get revised, and Oxford's are marked provisional.

What does the two-semester year look like?

This is the shape at most of the sector. Take Leeds and Manchester as the worked examples, because they are large and their calendars are close to each other.

• Leeds. Intro week runs 21 to 27 September 2026 and teaching from 28 September to 11 December. The Christmas closure is 24 December to 1 January. Semester one exams run 11 to 22 January 2027. Semester two teaches from 25 January to 7 May, with Easter closure from 25 to 30 March, and exams run 17 May to 4 June.
• Manchester. Welcome week is 21 to 25 September 2026 and semester one starts on 28 September. The Christmas break is 21 December to 13 January. Semester one exams run 14 to 29 January 2027, semester two starts on 1 February, the Easter break is 22 March to 4 April, and semester two exams run 17 May to 9 June.
• Bristol. Runs the same two-block shape but examines before Christmas. Welcome week is 14 to 18 September 2026, teaching block one runs 21 September to 11 December, with an assessment preparation week from 6 to 11 December and assessments from 14 to 18 December. Teaching block two runs 18 January to 30 April 2027, the spring vacation is 22 March to 9 April, and the summer assessments run 4 to 21 May.

December or January

The single biggest split in the table is whether semester one exams sit before or after Christmas. At Leeds and Manchester the vacation is the revision block. At Bristol, Edinburgh and Glasgow it is a real break, and the exams are done by the time the tree goes up.

Write down two dates from your own calendar: your last teaching day and your first exam day. The gap between them is your revision block. At Bristol it is one week. At Edinburgh, teaching ends on 4 December and the exams start on 9 December, with 7 and 8 December marked as revision. Two days. That is not a revision period. It is a final check, and it means the revision has to run through the teaching weeks or not at all.

How are Oxford and Cambridge different?

Three terms instead of two semesters, each with eight weeks of teaching and long vacations either side.

• Cambridge. Michaelmas Term starts on 1 October 2026 and Full Term runs from 6 October to 4 December. Lent Full Term runs 19 January to 19 March 2027, and Easter Full Term 27 April to 18 June. The university explains that "Full Term is an 8-week period during each Term when undergraduate teaching takes place".
• Oxford. The Faculty of Classics handbook lists the 2026/27 terms, marked provisional: Michaelmas 11 October to 5 December 2026, Hilary 17 January to 13 March 2027, and Trinity 25 April to 19 June 2027. Oxford numbers its weeks from 0th week, the week before Full Term, which is why deadlines in the handbook read like "Friday of 0th week".

What the vacations are for

Twenty-four teaching weeks a year is close to what Edinburgh or Leeds teach, but they are packed into three short bursts with long gaps between. Reading, essays and revision are expected to happen in those gaps, and the summer term carries the exams. Oxford's Greats handbook puts the thesis deadline at noon on Friday of 0th week of the final Trinity Term, which is before that term has started, and describes university revision classes running in Trinity Term. If you are at either university, the Christmas and Easter vacations are working time by design, and a week off at the start of each is the most you can afford.

How is Scotland different?

Earlier, longer and organised around SCQF credits. Honours degrees take four years and Glasgow's regulations require at least 480 credits, 120 a session. The dates start a week or two before England.

• St Andrews. Orientation week starts 7 September 2026 and teaching begins 14 September. There is an Independent Learning Week from 19 October, a revision week from 30 November, and semester one exams in the weeks of 7 and 14 December. The Christmas vacation starts 22 December. Semester two teaching begins 25 January 2027, with a second Independent Learning Week from 5 April, two revision weeks from 26 April and 3 May, exams in the weeks of 10 and 17 May, and an extended examination diet from 24 to 31 May.
• Glasgow. Welcome week from 14 September 2026, teaching from 21 September to 4 December, and the December exam diet from 7 to 18 December. The winter vacation is 21 December to 8 January. Semester two starts 11 January 2027, the spring vacation is 29 March to 16 April, the exam diet runs 26 April to 21 May, and resit examinations run 26 July to 13 August.
• Edinburgh. Welcome week from 14 September 2026 and teaching from 21 September, in two blocks: 21 September to 23 October and 26 October to 4 December. Revision on 7 and 8 December, exams 9 to 21 December. Semester two starts 11 January 2027, with Flexible Learning Week from 15 to 19 February, teaching to 2 April, spring vacation 5 to 16 April, revision 19 to 23 April, and exams from 26 April to 21 May.

Notice that the Scottish second-semester exams start in late April, three weeks before Leeds and Manchester. If you are at Glasgow or Edinburgh, Easter is not a break before revision. Revision is already running.

Where do the reading weeks fall?

Under several names, and not everywhere. Bristol calls them consolidation weeks and places them from 26 to 30 October 2026 and 22 to 26 February 2027. Edinburgh's Flexible Learning Week is 15 to 19 February. St Andrews has Independent Learning Weeks from 19 October and 5 April. Leeds and Manchester publish no mid-semester break in their term dates, and whether individual schools take one is a departmental matter.

How to use it

A reading week is the most valuable week of the semester, because it lands five or six weeks in. That is late enough to see the shape of a module and early enough to repair a gap cheaply.

1. List every lecture you never went back over and process those notes first.
2. Name the two modules you are furthest behind in.
3. Build your first set of flashcards from those two modules only.
4. Leave the modules that are going well alone.

If your university has no reading week, take the week that contains the late October half term and treat it as one anyway. Nobody will stop you.

When is Welcome Week, and what should you do in it?

Freshers' Week, Welcome Week, Intro Week and Orientation Week are the same thing under different names: the week before teaching. Leeds and Manchester run it from 21 September 2026, Bristol and Glasgow from 14 September, St Andrews from 7 September. Cambridge's Michaelmas Term starts on 1 October, five days before Full Term.

It is also the only quiet week you will get. Three things are worth doing in it that have nothing to do with the social calendar:

• Find the handbook for every module and write down each assessment, its weighting and its due date.
• Find your term dates page and mark the exam windows, reading weeks and resit period. You have just seen how much they differ.
• Ask about recording. Policies on recording lectures vary by university and by lecturer. Ask in week one, in writing where you can.

When are dissertations due?

Late in the final year, and set by the department rather than the university, so you will not find it on the term dates page. The pattern is a deadline in the second half of the final year, before the summer exams. Oxford's Greats handbook sets its thesis deadline at noon on Friday of 0th week of the final Trinity Term. Elsewhere the date is typically in March, April or early May. It is in the module handbook from September. Put it on the same page as the exam dates and count the weeks back, because the dissertation deadline and the revision period arrive together.

What does the year look like, week by week?

A plan built on the dates rather than on good intentions.

1. Week one. Set up once. Handbooks, weightings, deadlines, exam dates, reading week, resit period, all on one page. Then start the habit of processing each lecture within a day, while the term is quiet enough for it to stick.
2. Week six. Stop and audit. Which modules have you processed every week, and which have you been carrying? Write the answer down. This is the last week where a gap is cheap.
3. The reading week. Consolidation, not holiday and not revision. Close the gaps in the two weakest modules, make the first flashcards, and leave the rest alone.
4. The last three weeks of teaching. Deadlines cluster here. Protect them, because coursework marks are banked without an exam hall. Move from writing questions to answering them, on a widening schedule. That is spaced repetition, and it is what makes a two-day revision gap at Edinburgh survivable.
5. The vacation. At Leeds and Manchester, it is the revision block, and the first week of it is the one to spend on timed past papers rather than rereading. At Bristol, Edinburgh and Glasgow, it is free, and the useful thing to do with it is nothing. At Oxford and Cambridge, it is working time, with a week off at the start.
6. January. Semester two starts before semester one results arrive. Build it on your own record of what went badly, not on a mark you do not have yet.
7. Easter. Count the weeks from Easter Monday, 29 March 2027, to your first summer exam. At Glasgow and Edinburgh that is four weeks. At Leeds and Manchester it is seven. Work back with the three-week exam plan.
8. June to August. Either a real summer or a resit. Decide which in early June, not in August, and build the material while the lectures are fresh.

If you are new, and arriving from A-levels, Highers or a BTEC, the shift in how the year is assessed matters as much as the dates: what changes between sixth form and first year covers that side. Print your own university's calendar, mark the reading weeks, the exam windows and the resit dates, and you have the frame for the year. The rest is a study schedule that fits inside it.

Where Notibo fits

The part of this plan that breaks first is the processing, usually around week seven, when the lectures stack up faster than the evenings do. Notibo records a lecture, or takes an audio file you upload, and returns a transcript, structured notes and flashcards with spaced repetition, so that work does not compete with your assignments. It also turns PDF, PPTX and DOCX files into notes and flashcards. It works in 89 languages including British English. The free plan covers 30 minutes of recording a month, Pro is EUR 9.99 a month with a seven-day trial on the monthly plan, or EUR 99.99 a year, and uploads are capped at 50 MB. Long recordings are split into 30-minute files on the phone and joined into one transcript. Files are stored in the EU on Supabase in Frankfurt, and transcription and AI notes run on US processors under standard contractual clauses. Recording a lecture needs the lecturer's permission, so ask first.