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My sister-in-law texted me last week. “So when are you guys off again?” Same question, every single holidays, and every single time neither of us actually knows off the top of our head, we’re both just squinting at our phone calendars trying to remember if Term 3 finishes the same week everywhere. It doesn’t. It never does. I don’t know why I keep expecting it to.
We’re in different states. Her lot are in Perth, we’re in Sydney, and this year I actually got annoyed enough to sit down and work it out properly instead of the usual back-and-forth of “I think we’re off the 28th?” “No that’s not right, we go back before you do.”
Turns out the answer for spring holidays this year is the week of 28 September. That’s the one stretch where basically everyone’s off — NSW, Victoria, Queensland, WA, SA, ACT and the NT are all on holidays that week. Tasmania’s the odd one out, they don’t break up till 3 October, which is annoying if you’ve got anyone down there, because by the time they’re off, half the other states are already back at school.
Table version, because I know someone’s going to ask for exact dates in the comments:
| State | 2026 spring holidays | Actually overlaps with the others |
|---|---|---|
| VIC | 19 Sep – 4 Oct | 28 Sep – 4 Oct |
| NT | 19 Sep – 4 Oct | 28 Sep – 4 Oct |
| QLD | 19 Sep – 5 Oct | 28 Sep – 4 Oct |
| WA | 26 Sep – 11 Oct | 28 Sep – 4 Oct |
| SA | 26 Sep – 11 Oct | 28 Sep – 4 Oct |
| ACT | 26 Sep – 12 Oct | 28 Sep – 4 Oct |
| NSW | 28 Sep – 9 Oct | 28 Sep – 4 Oct |
| TAS | 3 Oct – 18 Oct | 3 – 4 Oct only |
(pulled off our own 2026 term dates page, which I now just bookmark and check instead of trying to remember)
If you do need Tasmania in the mix — we do, my husband’s whole family is in Hobart — you’re better off aiming for the first week of October instead. Tassie, NSW, WA, SA and ACT are all still off then, it’s just Victoria and Queensland and the NT who’ve gone back by that point. There’s no single week that works for literally every state this year. There just isn’t. You pick who you actually need to line up with and go from there.
Summer’s the easy one honestly, you don’t need to think about it as hard. Everyone’s off somewhere between 19 December and about the 25th of January, give or take a few days at either end depending which state, so if it’s a Christmas trip you’re planning you’ve got a lot more room to move.
A bit of context for why it’s such a mess in the first place — apparently Queensland and the NT do it this way because of the wet season, shorter break mid-year, longer one in summer. Tasmania’s just always a bit later than everyone else. WA starts its year later too, always has as far as I can tell. None of it was designed with people like us in mind, four families trying to land in the same postcode for a week.
If you do land on a date, book somewhere fast, because everyone else doing this same maths lands on the same weeks and family rooms go first. We nearly missed out on a place at Easter last year because I dithered for four days after we’d already picked the dates.
Anyway. If your family’s spread across different states too and you’ve worked out a combo that actually works, put it in the comments, I’m nosy and also I’ll take any excuse to not do this whole calculation again next year.
Dates checked against each state’s education department calendar and Tourism Australia’s holiday listings as of late July 2026. Doesn’t account for pupil-free days, which your kid’s actual school sets and no website can predict.
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