IB exam schedule May 2027: your own timetable, calendar and revision plan

The May 2027 IB exams run from Monday 26 April to Tuesday 18 May 2027. Everyone takes maths, so most students finish with Maths Paper 2 on Friday 14 May, or with Maths HL Paper 3 on the afternoon of Tuesday 18 May, the last paper of the session. Pick your subjects below: the planner lays out your exam weeks day by day, morning and afternoon, flags clashes, and fills in a revision plan for every day before them. Download it as a landscape PDF or add it to your calendar.

The full May 2027 timetable

Every Diploma paper in the May 2027 session, by day. "HL P3" means only HL students sit that paper; anything without a level is sat at both HL and SL (the paper lengths differ). Language A, B and ab initio papers in English, Spanish and French have their own days; every other language shares the dates marked "other languages".

Two sets of papers sit before this table starts: school-based syllabus subjects and Language and culture, from Friday 23 April. The arts (Visual arts, Music, Film, Theatre and Dance) have no timetabled written exam, and neither does TOK: those deadlines come from your school.

How start times and exam zones work

The table gives the session, not the clock time, because the clock time depends on where your school is. The IB puts every school in an exam zone, and all schools in one zone start the morning and afternoon sessions at the same local times. When one subject has two papers in a session, such as Psychology Papers 1 and 2 on the afternoon of 29 April, the second follows straight after the first.

The planner starts morning papers at 09:00 and afternoon papers at 13:00 until you change them under "Exam start times". Put in your school's times and the week view, the PDF and the calendar file all follow.

Clashes, and the subjects most likely to have one

A clash is two of your subjects in the same session. The common subject combinations are spread out, but a few pairs share a slot:

• Physics and Sports, exercise and health science (28 and 29 April)
• Computer science and ESS (30 April and 3 May)
• Chemistry and Design technology (5 and 6 May)
• Geography, Philosophy and Social and cultural anthropology (7 and 10 May)
• Economics and World religions (11 and 12 May)
• Digital society and Global politics (14 and 17 May)

If you have one, tell your coordinator as soon as you can. Clashes are sorted out through the school, usually by sitting one paper later the same day or the next under supervision, so you never see the other paper's questions in between.

How the revision plan works

The plan starts on the date you pick (by default 4 January 2027, or today if that is later) and fills each day with blocks of about 45 minutes. It follows four rules:

1. HL gets a little more time than SL. An HL subject is weighted 3 and an SL subject 2, roughly the ratio of their teaching hours.
2. The next exam pulls harder. Three weeks before a subject's first paper its share of blocks grows, and a week before it grows again.
3. The work changes as the dates get closer. More than six weeks out, blocks are topic reviews; from six weeks, they alternate between weak spots and past-paper questions; in the last two weeks, they are timed papers under exam conditions.
4. The day before a paper is for that paper. The first block is a final run-through of the subject you sit next, and exam days get one light block.

For the seven courses on Heptavo, the topic blocks rotate through the syllabus themes in the same order as the syllabus maps. For other subjects, pick your weakest topic each time. One rest day a week is built in; set it to "None" if you would rather study every day. For the reasoning behind a weekly rotation, see how to build an IB revision plan, and for the final fortnight, IB last-minute revision.

Getting it into your calendar

"Add to calendar" downloads an .ics file. On an iPhone, open it from the download and tap "Add all". In Google Calendar on a computer, go to Settings, then Import and export, and import the file. Outlook opens it directly. Every exam comes with a reminder the day before; tick "Put the revision plan in the calendar file too" if you want the revision days as well. The times in the file are local, so they stay right wherever your calendar is set.

Your choices are saved in this browser and in the page address, so "Copy link" gives you a link that opens your timetable on another device, or that you can send to a friend taking the same subjects.

Results and what comes after

May 2027 results come out in early July 2027; the IB confirms the exact time in June, and we add it to IB news and updates when it does. Until then, the timetable above is the one to plan around. If anything in it changes, it will change here too.

Source: the IB's final May 2027 Diploma and Career-related Programme examination schedule, as published by schools and checked against three copies on 26 October 2026. The IB exam schedule page on ibo.org listed sessions up to November 2026 on that date.