TL;DR: DepEd does not publish one master list of everything that happens in a school year. It publishes a calendar order that sets the structure, an annual memorandum that fills in the dates, and two annexes: Annex C listing nationwide regular and special holidays under Republic Act No. 9492, and Annex D, the Calendar of Legislated Activities and Celebrations. The current order is DepEd Order No. 009, s. 2026, which adopted the three-term calendar and repealed DepEd Order No. 012, s. 2025 in full. Its most consequential rule for activities is that legislated celebrations are now observed inside the classroom through subject integration, with competitions and Central Office events pushed into the End-of-Term Block. The statutory frame is Republic Act No. 7797 as amended by Republic Act No. 11480.
If you searched for the DepEd calendar of activities expecting a downloadable year planner, the reason you did not find one is structural rather than accidental. The national issuance sets the boundaries and the annual memorandum sets the dates; the actual day-by-day calendar is drawn up by your schools division office and your school inside those boundaries. This guide explains the machinery so you know which document to ask for.
Two Different Things Are Called the Calendar of Activities
The national calendar is a DepEd Order. It fixes the shape of the school year, the number of class days, when the year opens and closes, and the rules on how activities and celebrations may be held. It is issued to the whole system.
The school or division calendar of activities is the local document. It names your school opening programme, the dates of the Parent-Teacher Conference, the intramurals week, the recognition rites. It has to sit inside the national frame, and its dates are decided locally. If a parent is trying to plan around a specific event, the school calendar is the one they need, and it comes from the school.
Confusing the two produces a very common frustration: people search for a national list of every activity, find only the order, and assume something is missing. Nothing is missing. The order is the whole national instrument.
The Law Underneath It
Two statutes do the work.
Republic Act No. 7797 lengthened the school calendar from 200 days to not more than 220 class days.
Republic Act No. 11480, approved 17 July 2020, amended Section 3 of RA 7797. As amended, the school year starts on the first Monday of June but not later than the last day of August. The amendment adds three things worth knowing:
- in the event of a declared state of emergency or state of calamity, the President, on the recommendation of the Secretary of Education, may set a different start date for the country or parts of it, and the deferred opening applies to all basic education schools including foreign and international schools
- the Secretary of Education determines the end of the regular school year, taking into account Christmas and summer vacations and the peculiar circumstances of each region
- the Secretary may authorise Saturday classes for elementary and secondary levels in public and private schools
That is why the opening date moves within a window rather than sitting on a fixed date, and why nobody outside DepEd can announce the end of a school year.
The Current Order: DepEd Order No. 009, s. 2026
Issued 16 April 2026, this order adopted the Three-Term School Calendar across basic education. It repealed DepEd Order No. 012, s. 2025, the Multi-Year Implementing Guidelines on the School Calendar and Activities, in its entirety, and amended the transfer and enrolment provisions of DepEd Order No. 017, s. 2025.
The school year is built from three terms, each made of blocks:
| Block | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Opening Block | Term 1 only. Orientation for learners and parents, beginning-of-school-year assessments, initial health assessment and screening, collection of required data such as language mapping and school forms |
| Instructional Block | Protected teaching and learning. ARAL Program remediation sessions run after classes for 30 to 60 minutes, two to four times a week |
| End-of-Term Block | Two weeks at the end of each term. Grade computation, school forms, Parent-Teacher Conference and report card distribution, remediation and enrichment, co-curricular and extra-curricular activities, INSET, wellness break |
For the current school year, the order states the year opened Monday, 8 June 2026 and ends Thursday, 8 April 2027, over 201 class days. Our school calendar guide for SY 2026-2027 covers those dates and the term breaks in detail.
For everything after that, paragraph 4 is explicit: DepEd shall issue a memorandum before the start of every school year specifying the detailed schedule of school activities as well as celebrations and observances. So the next cycle's dates are not a matter of prediction. They are a matter of waiting for the memorandum.
Annex D: Where the Celebrations Actually Come From
The list people are usually hunting for is Annex D, the Calendar of Legislated Activities and Celebrations. It runs month by month from June, and each entry gives four things: the legal basis with a link to it, the observance, the date, and the intention behind it, followed by suggested activities.
A sample of what that looks like:
| Observance | Legal basis | When |
|---|---|---|
| DepEd Founding Anniversary | Administrative Order No. 322, s. 1997 | 23 June |
| National Dengue Awareness Month | Proclamation No. 1204, s. 1998 | 1 to 30 June |
| Nutrition Month | Presidential Decree No. 491, s. 1974 | 1 to 31 July |
| National Disaster Resilience Month | Executive Order No. 29, s. 2017 | 1 to 31 July |
| Buwan ng Wikang Pambansa | Proklamasyong Blg. 1041, s. 1997 | 1 to 31 August |
| Linggo ng Kabataan | Republic Act No. 10742 | Week containing 12 August |
| Literacy Week Celebration | Proclamation No. 239, s. 1993 | 8 September |
| National Teachers Month | Proclamation No. 242, s. 2011 | 5 September to 5 October |
Two things follow. First, these observances are not DepEd inventions; each one has a proclamation, decree, executive order or statute behind it, and DepEd is compiling rather than creating them. Second, the annexed list is where a school gets its year planner skeleton. Our guides to Buwan ng Wika and Nutrition Month go through two of these in full.
Separately, Annex C carries a non-exhaustive list of nationwide regular and special holidays under Republic Act No. 9492, including the movable ones. Our Philippine school holidays guide covers how those interact with class days.
The Rule That Changed How Celebrations Are Held
This is the part most material online has not caught up with. DepEd Order No. 009, s. 2026 subordinates celebrations to instructional time, and it is specific about how:
- Legislated activities are conducted strictly within the classroom, through integration into regular teaching and learning. Teachers contextualise and embed the themes, objectives and key messages into relevant subject areas using age-appropriate learning tasks, discussions, performance outputs or formative assessments.
- Central Office-initiated activities for learners and teachers are conducted in a structured, programmed manner across governance levels during the End-of-Term Block. Regional offices decide the scheduling of layered activities and eliminations within those blocks.
- National-level activities are conducted during the end-of-school-year break, so that learners who qualified through lower-level competitions can take part.
- Where local celebrations or holidays fall inside the Instructional Block, schools run asynchronous learning activities or hold make-up classes in the End-of-Term Block.
- A separate issuance on school clubs, organisations and other learner support observances is to be released by the Bureau of Learner Support Services.
In practice that moves the poster-making contest, the elimination round and the culminating programme out of a Tuesday morning in the middle of a term. It does not abolish them.
Where Class Suspensions Fit, and Where They Do Not
A calendar of activities plans for the year. A class suspension is an event on a day. They are governed separately, under DepEd Order No. 022, s. 2024, the Revised Guidelines on Class and Work Suspension in Schools During Disasters and Emergencies, which DO 009, s. 2026 lists among its references. Our class suspension rules guide explains who may declare one and at what level.
To be plain about what this site does and does not do: we do not announce suspensions. A static page cannot answer whether classes are cancelled today, and pretending otherwise would waste your time. Those announcements come from your local government unit, your schools division office and DepEd's own channels, in real time.
What to Ask For, and From Whom
| You want | Ask |
|---|---|
| The structure and rules of the school year | The current DepEd Order, linked below |
| The specific dates for a school year | The DepEd memorandum issued before that school year opens |
| Your school's event dates | Your school, through the school head or class adviser |
| Division-level competition schedules | Your schools division office |
| Whether classes are suspended today | Your LGU and your division office, in real time |
Our explainer on what a DepEd Order is covers how to check that the issuance you are reading has not been superseded, which matters here more than usual: DO 009, s. 2026 wiped out the multi-year guidelines that most existing calendar articles were written against.
Disclaimer: this is an explainer, not an announcement channel. SchoolFinderPH does not publish school calendars, does not announce class suspensions, and does not issue or host DepEd forms. Dates and schedules come from your school, your schools division office and the official issuances linked below.
Sources
- DepEd — DO 009, s. 2026, Guidelines on the Implementation of the Three-Term School Calendar in Basic Education (official issuance page)
- DepEd — DO 009, s. 2026, full PDF including Annex C holidays and Annex D Calendar of Legislated Activities and Celebrations
- Republic Act No. 11480, amending Section 3 of Republic Act No. 7797 on the start of the school year, full text
- DepEd — DO 010, s. 2024, Policy Guidelines on the Implementation of the MATATAG Curriculum
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