SQE exam dates, booking deadlines and the cut-off nobody mentions

When is the SQE sat?

SQE1 runs in fixed sittings rather than on a date you choose, and the established pattern is two windows a year, typically one in January and one in July. Each sitting spreads FLK1 and FLK2 across separate days within the window, so a sitting is a short block of dates rather than a single day.

We are deliberately not printing specific dates on this page. Windows shift, and a stale date on a study blog has ruined more plans than a hard question ever has. Take the pattern from this page and take the exact dates from the SRA's own SQE pages for your sitting. Checked 9 September 2026.

SQE2 runs on its own separate calendar with more sittings across the year, because the oral stations need to be scheduled individually. Plan SQE2 dates only once SQE1 is behind you.

Booking opens and closes long before the exam

Booking for a sitting opens well ahead of it and closes well ahead of it too. You are typically looking at a booking window that opens several months before the sitting and closes weeks to months before the exam itself, with the exact dates published per sitting.

Miss the close date and there is no late entry, no waiting list and no discretion. You wait for the next window, which on a two sitting year means roughly six months.

There is usually a separate, earlier step before booking: you register with the SRA and get an SQE candidate account first, and only then book a sitting through Kaplan. That two step structure catches people out, because the registration is not instant and you cannot book until it has gone through.

• Register with the SRA first, then book the sitting through Kaplan
• Registration is not instant, so do it before the booking window opens
• The booking close date is firm. There is no late entry
• Fees are paid at booking, not at the exam
• Reasonable adjustments have their own earlier deadline and their own evidence requirements

Places are allocated, and centres fill

Booking a sitting is not the same as booking a seat at the centre you want. Places are allocated across a network of test centres, and the popular ones, meaning the big city centres and anywhere with limited capacity, go first.

The practical consequence is travel. Candidates who book late routinely end up sitting a long, high stakes exam a train journey from home, on consecutive assessment days, having paid for two nights in a hotel they did not budget for. That is a booking problem, not an exam problem, and booking early solves it.

If you need reasonable adjustments, this matters more, because the centres that can accommodate a given adjustment are a subset of the network. Apply for adjustments as early as the process allows.

• Book as soon as the window opens if location matters to you
• Budget for travel and accommodation before you assume you will sit locally
• FLK1 and FLK2 fall on separate days, so a distant centre may mean multiple trips or multiple nights
• Reasonable adjustments narrow the centre options, so apply early

The examinable law cut-off, which almost nobody knows exists

This is the part of the calendar that catches out even well prepared candidates, because it is not a deadline for you to do anything. It is a deadline for the law itself.

The SQE examines the law as it stood at a fixed point before your sitting, and that point falls roughly four months before the exam. Anything that changes after the cut-off is not examined in that sitting. A new statute, a Supreme Court decision that reverses a leading case, an amended rule: if it lands after the cut-off, it is not on your paper.

So the exam is, by design, slightly behind the news. The rule that matters for you is that the correct answer is the law as at the cut-off, not the law as at the exam date. If you have been reading the latest developments and one of them contradicts what you learned, the older position is the answer for your sitting, and the newer one becomes the answer for a later sitting.

What the cut-off means for your revision

Three practical consequences, and they all point the same way.

First, materials go stale in a specific direction. Second hand notes or a course bought a year ago may be written to an older cut-off than yours, which means a handful of answers in them are now wrong for your sitting. That is a small number of questions, but they are questions you will get wrong confidently, which is the worst kind.

Second, brand new law is a distraction. If a change lands two months before your sitting, it is not examinable for you, and revising it takes time away from the thirteen subjects that are.

Third, if you are resitting, your cut-off moves. A question you answered on the last sitting may have a different correct answer on the next one. Do not assume your old notes carry across unchanged.

• Check what cut-off your study materials are written to before you trust them
• A change after your cut-off is background reading, not revision
• Resitting means a new cut-off, so re-check anything that has moved
• Where a topic has changed recently, learn which position applies to your sitting rather than only the current one

Building a plan around the calendar

Most SQE1 study plans fail on sequencing rather than on effort. The calendar gives you four fixed points, and if you place them properly the plan mostly writes itself.

Register with the SRA. Book the moment the window opens. Note the examinable law date and set your materials to it. Then work back from the sitting and diagnose early, because the one thing the SQE route will not do is tell you how you are doing before results day.

• Read the SQE1 exam format guide before you plan, so you know what you are aiming at
• Sit practice questions in week one, not week eleven
• Budget the full cost including travel, because the sitting fee is not the whole number
• New to all of this? Start with what the SQE is