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OpEx Dates 2026: The Full Options Expiration Calendar

Monthly options expiration (OpEx) in 2026 falls on the third Friday of every month: January 16, February 20, March 20, April 17, May 15, June 18, July 17, August 21, September 18, October 16, November 20 and December 18. Eleven of those are Fridays. June is the exception — it moves back to Thursday, June 18, because the third Friday (June 19) is Juneteenth and the NYSE is closed. Four of the twelve are quad witching: March, June, September and December.

What are all the monthly OpEx dates in 2026?

June 2026 is the only holiday shift in the year. Good Friday (April 3) and Christmas (December 25) are both market closures on a Friday, but neither is a third Friday, so neither moves an expiry.

2027, for planning ahead: Jan 15, Feb 19, Mar 19, Apr 16, May 21, Thu Jun 17, Jul 16, Aug 20, Sep 17, Oct 15, Nov 19, Dec 17. June shifts to Thursday again — Juneteenth 2027 lands on a Saturday and the NYSE observes it Friday, June 18.

Dates past 2027 depend on the NYSE publishing its holiday calendar for those years. We'd rather say "not confirmed yet" than project a date that a holiday later moves.

Why does the June 2026 date move to Thursday?

The rule: if the third Friday is an exchange holiday, expiration moves back to the preceding Thursday. It does not push forward to the following Monday.

June 19, 2026 is Juneteenth National Independence Day, a full-day NYSE closure that happens to land exactly on the third Friday. So everything about that expiry moves to Thursday, June 18 — the last trading day for expiring contracts, AM settlement for index options, PM settlement for equity options, and the elevated volume that comes with a quarterly expiry.

It's a small detail that breaks a lot of spreadsheets. Anything hard-coded to "third Friday" will print June 19, 2026 — a day the market isn't open. Flowtopia computes expiry dates against the NYSE holiday table instead of assuming Friday, so the platform shows Thursday, June 18 automatically.

Monthly vs. weekly expiration — what's the difference?

Monthly (standard) options expire on the third Friday. They're the original contract cycle, they carry the deepest open interest, and they're what "OpEx" refers to when a trader says it without qualification. Index options in this cycle are typically AM-settled — settlement is calculated from Friday morning's opening prints, not the close — while equity options settle at the close.

Weekly options ("weeklies") expire on other days of the week and are listed a few weeks out at most. On the most liquid underlyings — SPY, SPX, QQQ and a growing list of large caps — there is now an expiration nearly every trading day, which is where the entire 0DTE (zero-days-to-expiration) phenomenon comes from. Weeklies on equities are PM-settled.

Two practical differences that matter more than the definitions:

1. Open interest is not evenly spread. Monthly strikes accumulate positioning for months; a Tuesday weekly might have been listed nine days ago. When you look at gamma or open interest by strike, you're often looking at a monthly-dominated picture that resets in one session.
2. LEAPS roll into the January monthly. Long-dated contracts expire on the January third Friday — January 16, 2026 and January 15, 2027 — which makes those particular OpEx dates unusually heavy in single names.

Why does OpEx week behave differently?

"OpEx week" — Monday through the third Friday — has a character of its own, and it comes from mechanics rather than mood:

• Dealer gamma is at its peak, then vanishes. Market makers hedge their option books by trading the underlying. As a huge block of open interest approaches expiry, that hedging becomes more sensitive to price and more concentrated around big strikes. The moment those contracts expire, the constraint disappears — which is why the session after a monthly expiry often looks and feels different from the week before it.
• Pinning. Prices sometimes gravitate toward heavily-traded strikes into a monthly expiry as hedges are adjusted. It's a real, documented tendency, not a rule you can count on.
• Rolling, not opening. A lot of expiry-week volume is positions being moved forward rather than new conviction. Reading mechanical rolls as fresh directional bets is one of the most common misreads in flow analysis.
• Calendar collisions. Monthly OpEx frequently shares a week with FOMC, CPI, or peak earnings. Two scheduled events in one week is a different environment than either alone.
• The quarterly ones are bigger. March, June, September and December stack index futures expiry on top of everything above. See the quad witching 2026 dates for that detail.

None of this predicts direction. It tells you why the tape may be behaving mechanically, so you don't mistake structure for signal.

How should I use the OpEx calendar?

Treat it as context you check before you interpret anything else:

• Know the DTE you're actually looking at. A big print in a contract expiring Friday is a different story from the same print 60 days out.
• Watch where open interest is stacked into the third Friday, and watch what's left the following Monday.
• Flag the collisions — an OpEx week that also contains a Fed decision deserves more caution around position sizing, not less.
• Mark June 18, 2026 now. That Thursday is going to catch people out.

Where are these dates in Flowtopia?

All twelve 2026 expiries — with the June Thursday shift already applied — are built into Flowtopia's News & Calendar page, sitting alongside the Forex-Factory-style economic calendar (impact-rated events, currency filters, Week/Today/Tomorrow views, Actual/Forecast/Previous on expand) and the Most Anticipated Earnings logo board. They're computed from the NYSE holiday calendar, not typed in by hand, so they can't go stale.

From there, GEX by Strike shows where gamma is concentrated into an expiry, Options Surfer and Top Contracts show what's actually trading in those expirations, and the WAVE plots cumulative signed call vs. put premium against SPY through the session. Membership is $45/month, $350/year (≈$29/mo, saving $190 vs. monthly) or $1,500 lifetime.

Flowtopia is a market-data and education platform. Nothing here is investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Options involve substantial risk and are not suitable for every investor.

FAQ

When is monthly options expiration in 2026? The third Friday of each month: January 16, February 20, March 20, April 17, May 15, July 17, August 21, September 18, October 16, November 20 and December 18 — plus June, which moves to Thursday, June 18.

Why is the June 2026 expiration on Thursday, June 18? Because the third Friday, June 19, 2026, is Juneteenth and the NYSE is closed. When the third Friday is an exchange holiday, expiration moves back to the preceding Thursday rather than forward to Monday.

Is there any other holiday shift in the 2026 OpEx calendar? No. June 2026 is the only one. Good Friday (April 3) and Christmas (December 25) close the market on a Friday, but neither is a third Friday, so no expiry moves.

What's the difference between monthly OpEx and weekly options? Monthly options expire on the third Friday and hold the deepest open interest; index monthlies are typically AM-settled. Weeklies expire on other days — on SPY, SPX and QQQ there's now an expiration nearly every trading day — and are listed only a few weeks out.

Which 2026 OpEx dates are quad witching? March 20, Thursday June 18, September 18 and December 18 — the third Friday of each quarter-ending month, when index futures expire alongside equity and index options.

When do LEAPS expire? On the January monthly expiration: January 16, 2026 and January 15, 2027. That tends to make the January third Friday unusually heavy in individual names.