How to Book an ACCA Exam in 2026: Deadlines & Fees

Knowing how to book an ACCA exam is not just admin — it decides what you pay. Book an Applied Skills exam during the standard entry window and it costs £160; leave it to the late window and the same exam jumps to £409. That is £249 of pure penalty for missing a date, and it is the single most common way ACCA students waste money.

This guide walks you through the whole booking process: the four exam sessions, the split between myACCA session exams and on-demand Knowledge exams, the standard-versus-late deadline that sets your fee, and the truth about "deferring" a sitting. If you have not created your student account yet, start with our step-by-step guide on how to register for ACCA first, then come back here to book. Prefer structured help through the papers themselves? Our ACCA Knowledge Level preparation is built around the current syllabus.

How do you book an ACCA exam?

To book an ACCA exam, you enter through myACCA for session exams and through a licensed exam centre for on-demand Knowledge exams. Log in to your myACCA account, open "Book an exam," choose your session and paper, pick a centre, and pay the fee before the entry deadline. You can only book if your account has no outstanding fees.

That one-paragraph answer hides three decisions that actually cost or save you money: which route applies to your paper, which session to target, and which deadline you book against. The rest of this guide takes them in order. First, a prerequisite worth repeating: you must be a registered ACCA student with a current subscription before any booking screen will let you pay.

The four ACCA exam sittings — and what is on-demand

ACCA holds four exam sessions each year: March, June, September and December. The Applied Skills papers and all four Strategic Professional papers (SBL, SBR, and the Options) are session exams — they run only in those four windows, and you book them through myACCA.

The three Applied Knowledge exams — Business and Technology (BT), Management Accounting (MA) and Financial Accounting (FA) — work differently. They are on-demand computer-based exams, so you are not tied to the four sessions. You book them directly with a licensed CBE centre using ACCA's exam availability and booking table, and the centre sets the price. That flexibility is why most students clear the Knowledge level first and only then start planning around session dates.

Use that split to your advantage when you book. Knowledge exams have no national deadline, so sit them as soon as you are ready and let the results build momentum. Reserve your careful deadline-watching for the session exams, where the date and the fee are locked together. Treating the two routes as one calendar is what trips people up.

One timing change matters for 2026: ACCA withdrew the availability of remote session exams from March 2026. Remote sitting of session exams now remains only where there is no exam-centre provision, so for most students a session exam means a physical centre. If you are still deciding how many papers to attempt per window, read our breakdown of how many ACCA exams you can sit in a year before you commit to a session.

Booking step by step in myACCA

For a session exam, the flow inside myACCA is short but unforgiving on one point: the deadline. Here is the sequence that gets you booked without an avoidable penalty.

Source: ACCA Global, "Enter an exam" and GB "Fees and charges," 2026.

What to do with this: treat step 6 as the real deadline, not step 3. The standard entry deadline is both the cut-off for the cheap fee and the cut-off for any change — one date doing two jobs.

Booking an on-demand Knowledge exam

For BT, MA and FA, skip myACCA's session-booking screen. Use ACCA's exam availability and booking table to find a licensed CBE centre, contact the centre to reserve a slot, and pay the centre's fee. Because these are on-demand, you can book them year-round rather than waiting for a session window.

Standard vs late entry: the deadline that sets your fee

Every session has two booking deadlines. Book by the standard entry deadline and you pay the lowest fee; book in the late entry window after it and the fee rises sharply. ACCA itself recommends booking in the standard period for exactly this reason. For the December 2026 session, standard entry closes on 2 November 2026 (23:59 GMT) and late entry closes on 9 November 2026 (23:59 GMT), with exams held across the week of 7 to 11 December 2026.

Here is what each window costs, by paper group, for the December 2026 sitting.

Source: ACCA Global, GB "Fees and charges," December 2026 sitting.

What to do with this: the proportional hit is worst on the cheapest papers. An Applied Skills exam at £160 becomes £409 — 2.56 times the price — for the sake of a week. Book the moment you know you will sit, not when you feel ready.

How much does a late booking actually cost?

The table gives the totals; this is the gap on its own. The chart below shows the standard fee against the late fee for each session-exam group, so you can see exactly what the extra week of indecision adds.

What to do with this: notice the red bars converge at £467 for every Strategic paper. Late entry flattens the fee to a single high number regardless of paper, so the "I'll decide later" tax is real and large. The fix is a diary entry, not more money.

Can you defer or cancel an ACCA exam?

This is where students lose the most, because ACCA has no formal "defer to next session" button. What you actually have is the ability to change or cancel a booked session exam — but only up to the standard entry deadline. Cancel before that deadline and your exam fee is credited back to your account for future use. Miss it, and the fee is neither refundable nor transferable.

In practice, "deferring" means this: before the standard deadline, cancel the current booking (fee credited) and rebook for the session you actually want. After the standard deadline, there is no route to move it — you either sit the exam or forfeit what you paid. To change the format or version of an exam you must cancel and rebook, again only before that deadline.

A worked example makes the stakes concrete. Say you book SBR for December at the standard £208 but realise in late October that you are not ready. Cancel before 2 November 2026 and the £208 is credited back to your account, ready to spend on the March session. Leave it until 3 November and that £208 is simply gone — no sitting, no refund, no transfer. The deadline is the difference between a credit and a write-off.

So the standard entry deadline is the only date that gives you options. Build your sitting plan around it. If you are juggling exams with a job and worry about over-committing to a session, our ACCA study plan for a full-time job shows how to pick a realistic paper load before you pay.

Booking mistakes that cost ACCA students money

• Letting the subscription lapse. The £140 annual subscription must be current, or the booking screen rejects you — and chasing a re-registration mid-window can push you into the late fee.
• Treating the standard deadline as "roughly." It is a hard 23:59 GMT cut-off. One minute past 2 November 2026 for the December sitting and you are paying late-entry prices.
• Assuming you can defer. There is no deferral — only a pre-deadline cancel-for-credit. Students who "plan to move it later" usually forfeit the fee.
• Booking Knowledge exams in myACCA. BT, MA and FA go through a licensed centre, not the session-booking platform; looking in the wrong place wastes days.
• Over-booking a session. Paying for four papers you cannot realistically prepare means forfeiting fees when you withdraw after the deadline.

Frequently asked questions