Oxbridge Interview Dates 2026/27: Confirmed, Course by Course

1. Home
2. ›
3. Blog
4. ›
5. Oxbridge Interview Dates 2026/27

Cambridge's official undergraduate admissions site confirms the main College interview period for 2026 entry as 7 December to 18 December 2026. Oxford has now published its own subject-by-subject timetable too, so the question this page used to answer — which university has committed to dates and which has not — no longer exists. We read all 48 course rows on Oxford's interview timetables page on 18 September 2026 and counted them ourselves. What they show is that "Oxford interviews are in December" is far too coarse to plan around: the 48 courses split into two groups that require completely different things of an applicant, and which group you are in is not something you get to choose.

Cambridge’s December fortnight is fixed, so the six weeks before it are where the real preparation happens. Each Oxbridge subject has its own £180 pack of worked interview answers, and nine of the thirty packs also include a free sample, so you can check the format before choosing one for your own subject. The rest of this page sets out which of those weeks matter most.

How We Verified These Dates (Checked 18 September 2026)

Every date on this page is now confirmed rather than estimated, and we say for each one where it comes from. CONFIRMED means the date or range is stated in plain language on Oxford's or Cambridge's own admissions website, read directly on 18 September 2026. This page previously carried a projected Oxford window, built from the 2025 pattern because Oxford had not published a 2026 timetable; that projection has been removed rather than annotated, because a published timetable makes an estimate of it worse than useless. Where a figure below is a count we made rather than a number a university prints — the 48 rows, the 16, the 32 — we label it as ours and describe how to recount it.

Cambridge Interview Dates 2026/27 — CONFIRMED

Cambridge's official interviews page states the main interview period in plain terms: 7 December to 18 December 2026. We checked both ends of that range against a real 2026 calendar — 7 December 2026 is a Monday and 18 December 2026 is a Friday, so the confirmed window covers two full working weeks (Monday 7 to Friday 11, then Monday 14 to Friday 18 December). Cambridge's separate application dates and deadlines page adds the broader framing that "most College interviews take place in the first 3 weeks of December," which is consistent with the confirmed 7-18 December range sitting inside that wider description.

Cambridge also confirms several practical details that shape how families should plan: most interview invitations are sent in November, with some sent in early December for a small number of applicants; most applicants have 1 or 2 interviews totalling 35 minutes to an hour; and interviews may be online or in person, depending on which College is assessing the application and which course it is for. Cambridge additionally confirms a Winter Pool round — for strong candidates not placed by their first-choice College — expected around mid-to-late January 2027, described by Cambridge itself in approximate rather than exact terms.

Oxford Interview Dates 2026/27 — Published, and Different for Every Course

Oxford's interview timetables page now opens "The 2026 interview timetables are available to view below" and carries a table of 48 course rows. Each row gives the days on which pre-organised interviews fall, and then two further columns: the time by which you will be told about any additional interviews, and the days those may occur on. Oxford also states that applicants get at least 24 hours' notice of an additional interview, that all times are UK time, and that candidates may be asked to attend outside the published windows.

Counting the rows ourselves, the 48 courses divide cleanly in two. For 16 of them both additional-interview columns read "N/A": the December commitment is settled before the month begins, and no mid-December decision is coming. Those 16 are Biochemistry, Biology, Biomedical Sciences, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geography, History of Art, Materials Science, Medicine, Medicine (Graduate Entry), Physics, Physics and Philosophy, Experimental Psychology, Psychology Philosophy and Linguistics, Philosophy and Theology, and Theology and Religion. For the other 32, Oxford publishes a named hour by which it will tell you whether you have another interview — and those hours are not all the same day.

The Notification Hour That Matters More Than Your Interview Date

For the 32 courses that can call you back, Oxford does not simply say "you may have more interviews" — it publishes the exact hour by which you will be told. Counting the distinct deadlines in the table gives 12 different times, spread across six days. English applicants learn by 2pm on Thursday 10 December; Law by 11am on the same day; PPE by 4pm on Thursday 10 December; Chemistry, History and the four History joint schools by 11am on Monday 14 December; Human Sciences by 9:30am on Monday 14 December; Computer Science, Computer Science and Philosophy and the three Mathematics courses by 2pm on Wednesday 16 December. That hour, not the interview date, is the moment a December plan either holds or has to be rebuilt — and it is the part of the timetable that almost no guide reproduces. Three of those 32 are not calling you back to a second college at all: Archaeology and Anthropology schedules a third college on Thursday 17 December, while Human Sciences and Music send you to a departmental panel that is not a college interview. Check your own row on Oxford's table rather than assuming your subject behaves like a friend's.

What Happens at an Oxford vs a Cambridge Interview?

The two universities describe their interviews quite differently, and the difference is useful for preparation, not just for scheduling. Oxford's guide describes its interviews as "academic conversations about your chosen subject, similar to a short tutorial and designed to explore how you think and engage with new ideas" — the emphasis is on live, responsive reasoning with a tutor rather than reciting prepared answers. Cambridge confirms that most applicants have 1 or 2 interviews totalling 35 minutes to an hour, and that format may be online or in person depending on the College and course. At both universities, being interviewed more than once is common, and some applicants are interviewed by a second college as part of the pooling system that redistributes strong candidates across colleges when their first-choice college is oversubscribed for a given subject.

Subject-by-subject variation is real at both universities. Within Oxford's 2025 pattern, most subjects sat within the two four-day blocks described above, but Medicine ran a slightly different slot (interviews on Monday 15 or Tuesday 16 December 2025, with Medicine Graduate Entry pushed later to Thursday 18 and Friday 19 December). This kind of subject-specific offset is exactly what makes a single published "Oxford interview date" misleading — the real timetable is a grid of different days for different subjects, and families need the subject-specific line, not a single headline date, which is why Oxford's table is per course rather than per university. For subject-specific interview question preparation against your own published dates, see our Oxbridge interview questions resource, which covers worked examples across every major subject.

How the Published Timetable Should Shape Your Prep Timeline

Both universities have now committed, so a calendar can be built backwards from a real date rather than a range. Cambridge applicants work back from 7 December 2026 and hold readiness through 18 December. Oxford applicants should work back from their own row, because the spread is wide: Biochemistry and PPE candidates can be interviewed in the week commencing 30 November, while Medicine (Graduate Entry) applicants are not interviewed until 17 and 18 December. That is a difference of nearly three weeks between two Oxford applicants in the same admissions round. If you are in the 16 courses with no additional-interview column, your December is fixed and you can book around it now. If you are in the 32, plan for the possibility of a second block and keep the days after your notification hour clear until you know.

Three fixed points anchor the whole timeline regardless of which university you are applying to. The UCAS deadline for 2027 entry to Oxford, Cambridge, and most medicine, veterinary medicine, and dentistry courses is 15 October 2026 at 18:00 UK time — this is confirmed directly by UCAS. Shortlisting decisions and interview invitations follow in November, mostly from Cambridge (Oxford's shortlisting timing is not separately broken out on its public pages beyond "December" for interviews). Then interviews run through the published December window for your own course. A realistic family preparation plan uses the UCAS deadline as the point by which subject-specific interview practice should already be well underway — not started — because once invitations land in November, there may be only a few weeks of dedicated preparation time left before the December interview weeks begin. Our Oxbridge admissions preparation programme and subject-specific practice through our Oxbridge interview guides and 100 real Oxbridge interview question examples are built around exactly this earlier-than-you-think timeline, so students are interview-ready before either university's exact date is confirmed.

What Changes Now That Every Date Is Published

The subject content and interview technique Oxford and Cambridge test do not change with the calendar — a Biology applicant needs the same data-reasoning and live-reasoning skills on 7 December as on 15 December. What a published timetable changes is everything logistical: travel, time off school, and family scheduling can now be fixed rather than held flexible, and the fortnight you need to keep clear is narrower than the whole of December for most courses. It also removes an excuse. The date is no longer an unknown to wait on.

One thing the table does not tell you is when you will hear whether you have been shortlisted at all. Oxford states only that applicants receive a letter or email indicating whether or not they have been invited, "usually between the middle of November and early December". So the sequence for an Oxford applicant is: UCAS deadline 15 October 2026, shortlisting news from mid-November, and then a published interview date you can already look up today. Knowing the third of those before the second is unusual, and it is worth using: the weeks between the UCAS deadline and a shortlisting email are the ones with the fewest competing demands on them, and they are now the weeks you can plan against a date you already know. Our Oxbridge interview questions resource is organised by subject for exactly that stretch.

Frequently Asked Questions