OMPT Deadlines 2026 by University and the Booking Maths

The emails I dread most arrive in the second week of August. A student passed the maths weeks ago and is now discovering that "passed" and "certificate uploaded before the date on the programme page" are different events, separated by a grading queue, a weekend and, in some months, a Dutch public holiday. No one fails the OMPT because of logistics, but every summer a few people fail their deadline because of them, which amounts to the same thing with extra irony.

This post collects every dated deadline I can source from a university page, explains what a business day means to the graders in Amsterdam, and turns it into a calendar you can copy. The study side is not here; the study planner sizes that once you know your last safe sitting.

OMPT deadlines by university: the dated table

Only dates printed on a university page make it into this table. Where a programme publishes a variant and a score but no date, the general application deadline governs you. Years are the ones the pages showed on 21 September 2026; some already display the 2027 cycle, some still show 2026, and the day-and-month pattern is what repeats. Check the year on your own programme page before booking.

Which OMPT deadline is the real one: application, certificate or visa

Most programmes have three dates and students track the wrong one. The application deadline is when your file must be complete in Studielink or the portal. The certificate deadline is when the maths proof must be in that file, sometimes later (RSM allows until 15 March against a 15 January Studielink date). Then there is the visa date, which only non-EU applicants meet and which bites hardest: Maastricht sends the IND file before 1 July, an open deficiency cannot go into it, so a non-EU applicant to International Business has an effective deadline six weeks before the 15 August on the maths page. Take the earliest of the three and treat everything after it as a bonus.

The booking arithmetic: 72 hours, 8 business days and a Dutch calendar

Three numbers do all the work. You schedule through ProctorU at least 72 hours ahead; inside that window ProctorU charges a Take It Soon fee of $8, and inside 24 hours a Take It Now fee of $12, if a proctor is free at all. Standard grading returns your result within 8 business days counted from the day after submission. Fast grading, €120 per attempt, brings that to 4; it can be bought after you submit, is applied automatically about an hour later, and the confirmation screen keeps showing the standard time, which confuses someone every week.

A business day is any day except Saturday, Sunday and a Dutch national holiday, because the graders sit in Amsterdam. The help centre's own example: a test on a Monday with no holidays returns on the Thursday of the following week; with fast grading, on the Friday of the same week. Put a holiday on that second Monday and the standard result slips to Friday. Tests themselves run on holidays and weekends, with fewer proctors and a possible start delay of up to an hour.

• 2026: New Year's Day (Thursday 1 January), Good Friday 3 April, Easter Monday 6 April, King's Day 27 April, Liberation Day 5 May, Ascension Day 14 May, Whit Monday 25 May, Christmas Day (Friday 25 December), Boxing Day (Saturday 26 December).
• 2027: New Year's Day (Friday 1 January), King's Day (Tuesday 27 April), Liberation Day (Wednesday 5 May), Christmas 25 and 26 December. The movable ones (Good Friday, Easter Monday, Ascension, Whit Monday) shift every year; check the Dutch holiday calendar for 2027 before you count.

One input students forget: a retake needs time to be worth anything. My minimum is a repair week between the result email and the second sitting, and since the 72-hour notice fits inside that week, a retake cycle costs seven calendar days plus a second grading cycle. The booking flow itself is in the 72-hour rule post; what the result email contains is in the results post.

The backwards calendar from 15 January, 1 July and 15 August

I counted these against the holiday list above for the class year that opens on 1 October 2026: 15 January 2027 (Erasmus IBEB), 1 July 2027 (AUC, KU Leuven EEA, the Maastricht visa file) and 15 August 2027 (Maastricht SBE). "Zero margin" means the result lands on the deadline day itself, which I do not recommend: results arrive at any hour and you still have to upload the PDF. "Safe" means the result lands two business days early. The last column is the safe first sitting if a standard-graded result, a repair week and a second standard-graded sitting all have to fit.

Read the January row slowly. The safe standard date is a Sunday inside the quietest grading week of the year, and the gap between "safe with a retake" and "safe single sitting" is nearly three weeks. For Erasmus IBEB the retake column is academic anyway, since only the first attempt counts there; the calendar collapses to one sitting, and I want it in the first half of December, before the holiday queue, with the free OMPT-A mock scoring well above 70% in November.

Class-year expiry: OMPT products die on 30 September

Everything you buy from OMPT belongs to a class year that runs from 1 October to 30 September, and expires with it, used or not. Attempts refresh with the new class in October, which is how a student who has burned three attempts can buy three more for the next intake, subject to the university's cap. You never commit to a date at purchase; the attempt waits in your account until you schedule it. One trap: applicants to Maastricht's Faculty of Economics and Business cannot buy the official practice material or the bundle and get the Maastricht Math Summer Course instead. Prices are in the cost post.

Build your own OMPT deadline plan

1. Write down three dates from the programme page: the application deadline, the certificate deadline, and (non-EU only) the visa file date. Your deadline is the earliest.
2. Subtract two business days as a buffer; results arrive at any hour and you upload the PDF yourself.
3. Subtract 8 business days (4 with fast grading), skipping weekends and the Dutch holidays above. That is your last sitting.
4. If the programme allows more than one attempt, subtract seven days for a repair week and another 8 business days. That is your first sitting. Erasmus IBEB and IBEOR and UvA Business Administration and EBE count only the first attempt, so skip this step there.
5. Check the attempt cap on the OMPT exceptions page and on the programme page; the university's number wins.
6. Size the study time from the official estimates (40 hours for OMPT-C, 80 for A and F, 100 for B, 120 for D, E and G) and put it into the study planner. If the start date it gives you is in the past, you need fast grading or a syllabus triage, not optimism.
7. Buy the attempt in the right class year, open "Test info & access", click "Go to ProctorU", set your time zone, install the Guardian browser and pass "Test Your Equipment", then schedule at least 72 hours ahead.
8. Diary the results date as the 8th business day after the sitting, with the upload in the same entry, and link your account to every university you are applying to under Settings, then Classes, then "Add/change university".

What to do if the OMPT deadline is close, missed or doubled

If the deadline is under three weeks away, the calendar has one shape: sit once, as soon as you can book with 72 hours of notice, and buy fast grading so the result is back in 4 business days. There is no retake in three weeks with standard grading, so the sitting has to be the real one; if your last mock is far under the cutoff, read the postponement branch in the retake post before you pay. Under ten days, fast grading plus a Take It Soon slot is the only route, and even then a Friday sitting returns the following Thursday.

If you have already missed the deadline, the only useful message goes to the admissions office, not to OMPT, which grades in order, does not move you up the queue for a university date, and lists missed deadlines among the things it will not refund. Admissions offices do sometimes accept a late certificate where the maths was the only open condition; a Reddit thread from June 2026 describes a university allowing a later date after the scheduling site failed on the student. Ask in writing, attach your booking confirmation, and keep studying while you wait.

If you are applying to two universities with different deadlines, one certificate serves both, provided your account is linked to each; you can add a university at any moment, including after the test. The catch is that each university applies its own threshold and attempt count to the same score. A 68% on OMPT-A passes Groningen FEB at 60% and fails Maastricht SBE at 75%, and a second sitting to reach 75% counts as attempt two at both. Plan for the earliest deadline and the highest cutoff, and let the other application ride on the same PDF.

Two students, two calendars

Student one is a non-EU applicant to Erasmus IBEB: OMPT-A at 70%, first attempt only, certificate due 15 January 2027. There is no retake column for her, so the plan is about arriving at one sitting well prepared. She starts in October at 80 hours over ten weeks, sits the free mock in mid November, and books the real test for Wednesday 16 December; the standard result is due on Tuesday 29 December, with Christmas Day already counted out. If the November mock comes in under 75%, she moves the sitting to Thursday 7 January (a €50 admin fee) rather than risk her only attempt, and buys fast grading so the result lands by Wednesday 13 January.

Student two is a non-EU applicant to Maastricht International Business. The maths page says 15 August and three attempts, but his IND file goes before 1 July, so his real deadline is 1 July 2027 and the retake column applies. First sitting Monday 31 May: standard result by Thursday 10 June, a repair week on whatever the per-topic breakdown flags (for most of my OMPT-A students that is logarithms or quadratic equations), second sitting Thursday 17 June, result by Tuesday 29 June, two business days in hand. If the first sitting clears 75% he skips the second and saves €240. If it lands at 72%, he emails the SBE course coordinators about a possible exemption the same day and still books the retake, because an email is not a certificate.