11 Plus Exam Dates and Registration Deadlines by Region

Most pages that rank for "11 plus exam dates" are almanacs. They print every date for every county in one long wall and leave you to work out which of those dates still applies to your family. That is fine in March. It is close to useless in September, when roughly two thirds of the dates on the page have already passed and the page never says so.

This guide is built the other way round. It starts by working out where you are in the admissions cycle, because a parent whose child sat the test three weeks ago and a parent who has only just heard the phrase "11 plus" need completely different answers from the same search. Only then does it give you the regional dates, and it tells you which official page each one came from so you can check it yourself.

One thing to fix before anything else: the 11 plus is sat at the start of Year 6, for entry to secondary school the following September. It has nothing to do with Year 11 or GCSEs, despite what the search suggestions imply. If you are reading this about a Year 11 pupil, you are on the wrong page.

Live status of the 2026-27 cycle

As verified on 30 September 2026, for entry in September 2027:

• Registration: CLOSED in every region checked. The windows shut between 2 June and 31 July 2026 depending on area.
• Tests: sat. They ran between 8 and 19 September 2026 across the regions covered here.
• Results: pending. Most land between 9 and 16 October 2026.
• Application deadline: LIVE. 31 October 2026, through your home council.
• Next cycle registration (September 2028 entry): opens around 1 May 2027.

If you take one thing away, take that fourth line. The 31 October common application deadline is the only date on this list that most families can still act on, and it is a legal-ish hard stop rather than a suggestion.

Which of these three parents are you?

Route A: your child has sat, or is about to sit, the test

Your registration is done and your test date is fixed. The dates that still matter to you are results day for your region (see below), the 31 October application deadline, and National Offer Day on 1 March 2027. Practice is no longer the lever; the application form is.

Do this now, before results arrive: draft your council preference list assuming an outcome you do not yet know. List grammar schools and non-selective schools in genuine preference order, and check each school's own admissions criteria for distance and sibling rules. Then, when the result email lands in mid-October, you are editing a list rather than building one under time pressure. Our guide to 11 plus results day and appeals covers what the letter actually tells you.

Route B: you have just discovered the process and never registered

This is the hardest answer to give, so here it is plainly: for September 2027 entry, that route has closed. Birmingham City Council states outright that late registrations are not allowed, and other authorities take the same line. There is no queue to join and no form to submit late.

What you can still do is real, though. You can still name schools on the 31 October application, including non-selective schools you would be happy with. You can ask your council whether any grammar school in your area operates a later or separate testing route (a small number do, and one example is covered further down). You can put your child's name on waiting lists after 1 March. And you can start the next cycle properly if you have a younger child. Skip to Route C.

Route C: your child is in Year 5

You are in the best position of the three, and you have roughly seven months before anything is due. Registration for most regions opens around 1 May 2027 and closes between early June and late July 2027, with tests in September 2027 for entry in September 2028. Put a reminder in your calendar for 25 April 2027 and another for 1 June 2027.

Between now and then, the useful work is diagnostic rather than frantic: find out which test your area actually uses, because the format varies far more than the dates do. Start with grammar schools in the UK and their entrance tests to identify your region's paper, then read when to start 11 plus preparation for a sane year-by-year pace.

Registration deadlines: the date that decides whether your child sits at all

The single most common way a family loses access to a grammar school place is not failing the test. It is never being entered for it.

Look at the gap between the registration close and the test itself for the 2026 sitting:

• Buckinghamshire: registration closed 2 June 2026 (3pm), test 10 September 2026. Gap: 14 weeks.
• Birmingham (King Edward VI Foundation): registration closed 26 June 2026 (4pm), test 12 September 2026. Gap: 11 weeks.
• Warwickshire: registration closed 30 June 2026, tests 12 and 13 September 2026. Gap: 10 weeks.
• Kent: registration closed 1 July 2026 (midnight), test 10 September 2026. Gap: 10 weeks.
• Redbridge: registration closed 15 June 2026 (5pm), test 18 September 2026. Gap: 13 weeks.

That is the trap. Families think about the 11 plus when the school year restarts in September, and by then the door has been shut for two to three months. The mental model that works is: the deadline that matters is in early summer, not autumn.

Two further details catch people out. First, in Buckinghamshire, children at state-funded Buckinghamshire primary schools are entered automatically, but children at schools outside the county (including Milton Keynes) must register themselves inside the window, per Buckinghamshire Council. "My school will sort it" is a county-specific assumption, not a national one.

Second, access arrangements have their own earlier deadline. Warwickshire's access arrangements applications closed on 30 June 2026 with decisions sent the week of 13 July. Redbridge considers no adjustments to test arrangements after 15 June 2026. Birmingham's reasonable adjustments deadline was 12 June 2026 at 4pm, a fortnight before general registration closed. If your child needs extra time or a modified paper, your real deadline is earlier than the one on the headline page.

To see the dates for one area on their own, choose it below. Dates already behind us are marked as passed.

Kent, Essex and the south east

Kent Test (Kent County Council). Registration closed at midnight on Wednesday 1 July 2026. The test was sat on 10 September 2026 by pupils at Kent primary schools, and on the weekend of 12 and 13 September 2026 by pupils who do not attend a Kent primary school. Results are emailed on Thursday 15 October 2026, but only to parents who supplied an email address at registration. Check the Kent Test pages and our Kent Test format guide for what the papers contain.

CSSE (Essex). The examination for 2027 entry was on Saturday 19 September 2026 and registration is closed. It is two papers, one English and one Mathematics, each 60 minutes, with an extra 10 minutes' reading time for English. The CSSE consortium covers ten schools, including King Edward VI Grammar School, Colchester Royal Grammar School, Colchester County High School for Girls, both Southend High Schools, both Westcliff High Schools, St Bernard's High School, St Thomas More High School and Shoeburyness High School. One registration, many schools, one date.

London boroughs

Sutton. The Selective Eligibility Test timetable for 2027 entry ran: registration opened Friday 1 May 2026, access arrangements deadline Tuesday 12 June 2026, registration closed Thursday 31 July 2026, and the SET was sat on Tuesday 15 September 2026. Five schools share it: Sutton Grammar, Wilson's, Wallington County Grammar, Nonsuch High School for Girls and Wallington High School for Girls, per Sutton Grammar School.

Crucially, the SET is only stage one. School-run stage 2 exams followed on Saturday 26 September and Saturday 3 October 2026, with a Wilson's School-only aptitude day on Saturday 10 October 2026. A parent who reads a single "Sutton: 15 September" row somewhere and stops there has missed three more test days.

Redbridge. Registration opened 1 May 2026 and closed at 5pm on Monday 15 June 2026, the earliest close of any region here. The test was on Friday 18 September 2026 and results are emailed in mid-October. Note one Redbridge-specific rule: a completed 11 plus photo ID form must be brought to the test, and without it the child cannot sit it. The form is sent to parents at the start of September with the invitation letter.

Other London boroughs with selective schools, including Bexley, Bromley, Barnet and Kingston, largely run through individual schools or small consortia rather than a single borough-wide test. Our London consortium guide sets out who tests with whom.

Birmingham, Warwickshire, Buckinghamshire and the Midlands

Birmingham (King Edward VI Foundation). Registration for 2027 entry opened 5 May 2026, the reasonable adjustments deadline was 12 June 2026 at 4pm, and registration closed 26 June 2026 at 4pm. The entrance test was 12 September 2026 in morning and afternoon sessions, results were issued 16 October 2026, the local authority preference form deadline was 31 October 2026, and National Offer Day is 1 March 2027. Full timetable at the King Edward VI Foundation, with more context in our Birmingham 11 plus guide.

Warwickshire. Registration opened 7 May 2026 and closed 30 June 2026. Invite letters went out in the week commencing 10 August 2026, tests were held 12 and 13 September 2026, and results were available 16 October 2026. After that: application deadline 31 October 2026, proof of address 31 December 2026, National Offer Day 1 March 2027.

Buckinghamshire. Registration ran 1 May to 2 June 2026 (3pm). The practice test was 8 September 2026 and the Secondary Transfer Test 10 September 2026, with results on 9 October 2026, the earliest results date in this guide. Buckinghamshire requires a score of at least 121 to be considered qualified for a grammar school place, and uses 1 September 2026 as the home address cut-off for the main allocation round. See our Buckinghamshire Transfer Test guide.

Lincolnshire. The Lincolnshire Consortium splits its 11 plus across two separate sittings: Verbal Reasoning on Saturday 12 September 2026, then Non-Verbal Reasoning and Spatial Awareness on Friday 18 or Saturday 19 September 2026. If you budgeted for one test day, you budgeted wrong.

Results day and the 31 October collision

Here is the squeeze that no almanac explains. Results arrive in a tight cluster: Buckinghamshire 9 October, Kent 15 October, Warwickshire and Birmingham 16 October. The common application deadline is 31 October. That leaves between two and three weeks.

Three weeks sounds survivable until you remember what has to happen inside it: absorbing an emotional outcome, possibly touring a school you had not seriously considered, re-ranking six preferences, checking each school's oversubscription criteria, and submitting the form. Families who wait for the result before starting the application routinely find themselves doing all of that in the last weekend of October.

So plan the application before results. Two versions of your preference list, one assuming a qualifying score and one assuming not, take an hour to draft in early October and remove almost all of the panic.

The other misunderstanding worth naming: a qualifying score is not an offer of a place. The King Edward VI Foundation says this explicitly about its 16 October result. Qualifying means your child is eligible to be considered; the place is then allocated against each school's admissions criteria from the preference form you submit by 31 October. Skip the form, or rank badly, and a strong score buys nothing. Applications open on 1 September and go through your home council even when the school sits in another council's area, and offers are sent on 1 March or the next working day, per GOV.UK.

Grammar schools that run their own timetable

Aggregator pages give each county one row. Reality is messier, and the exceptions are where places are quietly lost.

• Weald of Kent Grammar School runs its own registration period for 2027 entry, opening Monday 1 June 2026 at 9:00am and closing Friday 10 July 2026 at 4:00pm. That is a different window from Kent County Council's Kent Test registration, which closed on 1 July. A family working only from the county date could have missed nine days they were entitled to.
• Sutton's stage 2 exams on 26 September and 3 October, and the Wilson's aptitude day on 10 October, sit entirely outside the borough-wide SET date.
• Lincolnshire's two sittings mean two separate test days rather than one.

The general rule: after you have found your county or borough date, open the admissions page of each individual school you intend to name and look for a second timetable. If one exists, it will not be on the council page.

What to do if you missed the deadline

If registration has closed for you this cycle, the productive moves are these. Submit the 31 October application anyway, ranking the non-selective schools you would genuinely want. Ask your council directly whether any local grammar school has its own separate route with a later window. Join waiting lists after National Offer Day on 1 March. And if you have a Year 5 child, treat the missed cycle as free intelligence: you now know exactly which windows to watch.

For the next cycle, the calendar is simple. Around 1 May 2027, registration opens in most regions. Early June to late July 2027, it closes, with access arrangements deadlines a week or two earlier still. September 2027, tests. Mid-October 2027, results. 31 October 2027, application. 1 March 2028, offers.

If you want that mapped onto your child's actual weeks rather than held in your head, our exam plan tool builds a schedule backwards from your region's test date, so the registration window sits in the plan rather than in your memory.

Quick answers

What date is the 11 plus exam in 2026? Between 8 and 19 September 2026 in the regions covered here, for entry in September 2027. Specific days include Buckinghamshire 10 September, Kent 10 September (Kent primaries), Birmingham 12 September, Warwickshire 12 and 13 September, Sutton 15 September, Redbridge 18 September and CSSE Essex 19 September.

What month are 11 plus exams? September, in the first term of Year 6, almost everywhere in England. A small number of independent schools test in November or January instead.

Are 11 plus exams moving to July? Not in the regions covered in this guide. All the 2026 sittings above are September dates. Any change would be announced by the individual local authority or consortium, so check your region's official page rather than relying on a general claim.

Do Year 11s leave in June or July? Different exam entirely. Year 11 is GCSE year, sat at 15 or 16. The 11 plus is sat at the start of Year 6, at age 10 or 11, and the two are unrelated.

Last verified: 30 September 2026. Dates for Kent, Birmingham and Lincolnshire were cross-checked against indexed copies of the official pages, which block automated access; confirm those three directly with the authority before acting. Every date here comes from a council, consortium or school source linked above, and this page is refreshed each cycle. If you are starting from scratch, create a free account and set your region so the right deadlines follow you.