Wales: how the national school calendar works
Reviewed 2026-09-08 · TermMinder
In England, term dates are a local decision: GOV.UK's term dates finder sends you to your own council because no two are guaranteed to match. Wales coordinates dates nationally. Since 2014, Welsh law has required councils and relevant governing bodies to co-operate, and gives Welsh Ministers power to direct dates when they do not align. For 2026/27, that produced a common direction with a Powys variation.
The law behind the national calendar
Section 42 of the Education (Wales) Act 2014 wrote new sections into the Education Act 2002. The first of them, section 32A, still leaves each council to determine term dates for its community schools, and each foundation or voluntary aided school's governing body to determine its own. But it then requires every one of them to "co-operate and co-ordinate" with every other, "to ensure that the term dates determined are the same (or as similar as can be) for every maintained school in Wales".
Councils must notify the Welsh Ministers of the dates they have set, and once notified the dates can only be changed if the council, the governing bodies and the Ministers all agree.
The Act also gave the Welsh Ministers a backstop. Section 32B lets them direct a council or governing body "to determine such term dates for a maintained school in Wales as may be specified in the direction". That is the power the Welsh Government now uses each year: it consults on a proposed calendar, then issues a direction covering every council and every maintained school. One page on gov.wales settles the school year for the whole country.
The 2026/27 calendar
The 2026/27 direction and explanatory memorandum shows how the result works. The direction gives the following calendar to maintained schools across Wales, with a specific Powys variation:
- Autumn term: Tuesday 1 September to Friday 18 December 2026, with half term from Monday 26 to Friday 30 October.
- Spring term: Monday 4 January to Friday 19 March 2027, with half term from Monday 8 to Friday 12 February.
- Summer term: Monday 5 April to Tuesday 20 July 2027, with half term from Monday 31 May to Friday 4 June.
The memorandum records that the Welsh Ministers ran a 12-week consultation on these dates before setting them, so councils and schools had their chance to object before the direction was made.
The Powys exception
"The same (or as similar as can be)" leaves a little room, and one council uses it. The direction states that "Powys County Council schools alone will end the autumn term on Tuesday 22 December 2026", two days later than everyone else, and will finish the summer term on Friday 16 July 2027 instead of Tuesday 20 July.
The reason is the Royal Welsh Show. The show week begins on Monday 19 July 2027, which would otherwise be the last two days of the Welsh summer term. Powys finishes the previous Friday so that, in the memorandum's words, "children and school staff will be free to attend the Royal Welsh Show for the full week". The two days are recovered before Christmas. The memorandum describes this as reflecting "the Welsh Ministers' very high regard for the significant cultural and economic value of the Royal Welsh Show".
It is a small example of what the law was designed to allow: a national calendar that flexes where local life genuinely demands it, rather than one that fails the moment a council needs a different day.
What this means for parents
If your child attends a maintained school in Wales, the gov.wales dates are your dates. The direction covers "community, foundation or voluntary" schools, including voluntary controlled and voluntary aided, as well as community special schools and maintained nursery schools. A grandparent in Cardiff and a cousin in Wrexham are working to the same school year, and there is no council page to hunt for.
Two caveats are worth holding on to. The national calendar sets terms and holidays, not training days. Under the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions (Wales) Document 2024, a full-time teacher "must be available for work for 195 days", of which "5 days must be days on which the teacher may only be required to perform other duties", and those days "must be specified by the employer or, if the employer so directs, by the headteacher". Your school's training days therefore come from the school, not from the national table. And if you are in Powys, remember that your December and July dates differ from the rest of Wales.
The other practical point is cross-border. If you live near the boundary with England, do not assume your dates match your neighbours' across it. English councils choose their own weeks, and their half terms and summer break-ups can fall a week or more away from the Welsh dates, which matters for shared childcare and family travel. The GOV.UK finder above will show you what the nearest English council has chosen.
When a Welsh calendar is published, TermMinder shows the official direction and keeps the Powys variation visible on its own page. Use the finder to locate the available calendar, save it on this device or subscribe to its public ICS feed, and configure alerts in your calendar app. School-level training days still need confirmation from the school. The phone-calendar guide explains how to subscribe.