December SAT 2026: Deadlines, Fees and Score Dates

The first deadline for the December SAT is not the registration deadline. If your teen needs to borrow a testing device from College Board, the request has to be in roughly fifteen days earlier, and nothing on the registration page shouts about it.

The test itself is Saturday 5 December 2026, the last SAT before the calendar breaks until March. That makes it the final chance for juniors building a score before spring and for seniors with regular decision deadlines still open. It also makes it the administration where a missed date costs the most, because the next weekend SAT is three months away.

Below is every date and fee that applies, taken from College Board's own dates and fees pages rather than from a prep-company summary, plus the one scheduling collision that trips up students who are retaking.

When is the December 2026 SAT?

Saturday 5 December 2026. It is the fifth and last weekend SAT of the 2026-27 autumn, following administrations in August, September, October and November.

What matters more than the date is what comes after it. The next weekend SAT is 6 March 2027. There is no January or February weekend administration, so December is not one option among many in a continuous run of test dates. It is the end of the autumn, and a student who skips it or misses the deadline is making a three month decision rather than a four week one.

For juniors, that usually argues for sitting it. A December score gives a real baseline to work from over the spring, and the superscoring and Score Choice rules mean a weak result does not have to follow them anywhere.

Every December SAT deadline, in order

Four dates matter, and they do not fall in the order most people expect. Here they are in the sequence they actually arrive.

The 24 November date does three jobs at once, which is why it is worth writing down. It is the last day to register late, the last day to move test centre, and the last day to cancel at the lower fee. Miss it and your options narrow to turning up or not turning up.

If plans are already shifting, the mechanics of moving or dropping a registration are covered in detail in our guide to changing or cancelling an SAT registration.

The deadline that lands first, and it is not the one you think

College Board's dates page carries one sentence that reorders the whole calendar: "Students who need to borrow a device from College Board will need to register and request their device earlier than the registration deadline, at least 30 days before test day."

Thirty days before 5 December is 5 November. So a student who does not own a laptop or tablet has to be registered and have the device requested more than two weeks before the deadline everybody publishes. There is no late window for this. The device has to be shipped, and shipping does not bend.

This is the quietest way to lose a test date. A family reads "registration closes 20 November", registers on 19 November, and then discovers the loaner deadline passed a fortnight earlier. The student is registered for a digital test with nothing to take it on.

Two practical notes. The school may have devices available even if College Board's loan window has closed, so ask the test coordinator before assuming the date is lost. And if accommodations are also in play, those approvals run on their own longer timeline, which we cover in how accommodations work inside Bluebook on test day.

What the December SAT costs in 2026

The SAT registration fee is 68 dollars. Everything else is a surcharge for changing your mind, and the amounts are small enough that they should not drive the decision.

Two of those are worth a second look. The waitlist is free, which is a change from the days when standby cost money, and a lot of families still assume it does not exist. It is not a seat: you test only if space and materials remain once registered students are in. As a fallback after 24 November it costs nothing to try.

The other is the gap between cancelling before the deadline and after it. Ten dollars is not a reason to rush a decision, but the deadline itself is, because after 24 November a cancellation no longer releases you from anything useful.

Students who qualify for a fee waiver skip most of this entirely, including late registration fees. Eligibility is narrower than people assume and worth checking properly against who qualifies for an SAT fee waiver.

When do December SAT scores come out?

Students see scores on 18 December 2026, thirteen days after the test. Schools and districts get them in the K-12 reporting portal three days later, on 21 December.

That is unusually quick. College Board's own guidance is that most weekend scores release two to four weeks after test day, and December sits at the fast end, probably because of where the holidays fall. The practical consequence is that a 5 December score is in hand before most January application deadlines, which is the whole reason the December administration matters to seniors.

If you want to understand what the number means once it arrives rather than just waiting for it, our SAT score calculator converts section performance into a composite, and when SAT scores come out covers the release mechanics across the year.

Should you wait for your November score before you register?

You cannot, and this is the collision nobody flags. The November SAT was 7 November, and its scores release on 20 November. December registration closes on 20 November. Same day.

So a student retaking in December who wants to see the November result first is being asked to decide on the morning the result appears, with no time to think. In practice most families either register blind or miss the window.

There is a cleaner way through it, and it falls straight out of the two dates. Register for December during the regular window, then use the 24 November cancellation date as your decision point. The November score arrives on the 20th. You have four more days to cancel for 34 dollars if it turned out to be enough. That buys a real decision instead of a guess, and the cost of the option is a third of the registration fee.

This is the kind of sequencing that gets missed because the two dates live on different College Board pages. Put them side by side and the answer is obvious.

Is the December SAT too late for college applications?

For regular decision, no. An 18 December score reaches colleges well before the January deadlines that dominate regular decision, and many institutions accept scores sent into January.

For early decision and early action, almost certainly yes. Those deadlines mostly fall on 1 November, five weeks before the test. A December score cannot be part of an application already submitted and read, though some colleges will consider it for deferred or waitlisted candidates. The distinction between the two application routes, and why it changes the testing calendar, is covered in early decision versus early action.

The honest caveat: this varies by college more than any general article can capture. Testing policies, score deadlines and whether scores are considered at all differ institution by institution, and they change between cycles. Read the admissions page of each college on your teen's list rather than trusting a summary, including this one.

What to do in the eight weeks before test day

Eight weeks is a real amount of time and a bad amount of time to spend on the wrong things. It is too short to rebuild a weak foundation in algebra. It is comfortably long enough to fix the things that cost marks without costing knowledge.

1. Sit one full Bluebook practice test early, in one sitting, timed. Not a section, not a preview. The number matters less than the error pattern.
2. Sort the errors into three piles: did not know it, knew it and misread, knew it and ran out of time. The three piles get completely different treatment and most students treat them identically.
3. Attack the second and third piles first. Careless errors and pacing are the cheapest marks available in an eight week window.
4. Leave the last week alone. One light practice section, sleep, and the test day checklist sorted in advance.

What does not work in eight weeks is starting at page one of a prep book. That is a six month plan compressed into two months, and it reliably produces a student who has revised the first third of the syllabus thoroughly and the rest not at all.

The dates, in one place

The December SAT is 5 December 2026. Registration closes 20 November, everything else closes 24 November, and a borrowed device has to be requested around 5 November. Scores arrive 18 December, in time for regular decision and not for early action. The waitlist is free if you miss the window entirely.

The one piece of sequencing worth acting on: register before 20 November even if you are waiting on a November score, because the 24 November cancellation date gives you four days to change your mind for 34 dollars. Deciding blind is not the only option, but you have to set it up in advance.

Sources verified 6 October 2026: College Board SAT dates and deadlines, College Board SAT test fees and College Board score release dates.