What is quad witching, and when are the 2026 and 2027 dates?

Quad witching is the third Friday of March, June, September and December, when stock index futures, stock index options and stock options (and, historically, single-stock futures) expire on the same day. The next one is Friday, December 18, 2026, and the 2027 dates are March 19, June 17 (a Thursday, expected, because Friday June 18 is the Juneteenth market holiday), September 17 and December 17.

This post explains what expires on those days, why most sources now say "triple witching", how to work out the dates yourself from the calendar, and why the day draws attention from options traders.

What quad witching is

Our glossary entry on quad witching gives the short version: four times a year, several kinds of contracts reach their expiration on the same day. Nasdaq's glossary describes the "triple witching hour" as the last trading hour on the third Friday of March, June, September and December, when stock options, futures on stock indexes and options on those futures expire together. Nasdaq adds that large trades in index futures, options and the underlying stocks by hedgers and arbitrageurs cause abnormal activity on those days.¹

Every month has a standard options expiration on its third Friday, often shortened to OPEX. What makes the quarter-end months different is that index futures expire on the same day as the options, so more contract types roll off at once.

Quad or triple witching: what happened to the fourth leg

"Quadruple" witching counted single-stock futures as the fourth contract type. In the US, those traded on OneChicago, which ran as a national securities exchange solely for security futures products. According to the SEC's order, OneChicago ceased trading operations as of September 18, 2020, closed its trading facility and closed out all positions. It also moved its December 18, 2020 and March 19, 2021 expirations forward to September 18, 2020.²

With no US single-stock futures left, only three contract types expired together on those Fridays from 2020 into 2026, which is why most sources since then say "triple witching". The two names describe the same quarterly day.

That may change the count again. On June 30, 2026, CME Group announced it would launch single-stock futures on more than 50 US stocks on July 27, pending completion of all regulatory review, with 55 larger-sized and 22 Micro-sized contracts listed on CME.³ This post does not cover when those contracts expire, so it does not count them as a fourth leg on the quarterly Fridays.

When: the remaining 2026 date and the 2027 dates

• Friday, December 18, 2026. Cboe's 2026 options expiration calendar lists it as the standard expiration date. Standard AM-settled index options trade for the last time on Thursday, December 17, 2026.⁴
• Friday, March 19, 2027. Computed as the third Friday. Good Friday 2027 falls on March 26, so there is no conflict.⁵
• Thursday, June 17, 2027 (expected). The third Friday, June 18, 2027, is an NYSE holiday (Juneteenth National Independence Day, observed), so the expiration is expected on the preceding business day.⁵
• Friday, September 17, 2027. Computed; Labor Day is September 6, 2027.⁵
• Friday, December 17, 2027. Computed; Christmas is observed on Friday, December 24, 2027.⁵

Cboe had not published a 2027 expiration calendar as of 2026-10-24, so the 2027 dates are computed from the rule below. Check the exchange calendar when it is published; Cboe itself notes that its dates are subject to change.⁴

Worked example: finding a quad witching date yourself

The rule has two steps. First, find the third Friday of the quarter-end month. Second, check that Friday against the NYSE holiday list; if the exchange is closed that day, the expiration moves to the preceding business day.

The first Friday of a month falls somewhere between the 1st and the 7th, and the third Friday falls two Fridays after it:

Here is the rule applied as of 2026-10-24, with June 2026 included as the precedent for a holiday Friday.

For December 2026, the first Friday is the 4th:

For March 2027, the first Friday is the 5th:

For June 2027, the first Friday is the 4th:

That Friday is the Juneteenth holiday, so the second step applies and the expected expiration moves back one business day:

The June 2026 precedent shows the same shift on a published calendar. The third Friday, June 19, 2026, was the Juneteenth holiday. Cboe's 2026 calendar marks Thursday, June 18, 2026 as the standard expiration, and Cboe's holiday notice lists June 19 as a holiday with no regular trading session on its options and equities exchanges.⁴⁶ One detail is still open for June 2027: this post does not say when index futures stop trading that week, because the futures-side rule for a holiday Friday is not covered here.

Why options traders pay attention to it

Expiration ends a contract's life. Before or on that day, holders and writers of the expiring contracts either close them, roll them to a later expiration, or let them settle. When index futures, index options and stock options all reach that point on the same day, much of that activity lands at once. Once the contracts expire, they drop out of open interest, the count of contracts still open, so the open interest picture after a quarterly expiration can look quite different from the one before it. Our post on what happens to gamma exposure after monthly OPEX walks through that kind of before-and-after shift for a monthly expiration.

A second reason is the index calendar. S&P Dow Jones Indices makes its quarterly index changes effective before the open on the Monday after the third Friday of the quarter-end month, "to coincide with the quarterly rebalance".⁷⁸ In September 2026, for example, the third Friday was 2026-09-18 and the changes took effect before the open on Monday, 2026-09-21, the first trading day after that Friday's close. Funds that track those indices adjust at the Friday close, the same day as the expiration.

Nasdaq's glossary and our own glossary both describe activity on witching days as commonly higher than on a typical session. That is a description of what tends to happen, not a figure for any particular date. For more on how the monthly calendar works, our explainer on the third-Friday rule covers the standard monthly expirations around these quarterly ones.

How to practice this

Open a CaymanBot account and, for a handful of trades on the feed, check each contract's expiration date: is it a quarter-end third Friday, another monthly third Friday, or a weekly or daily one? In the first two Learning Mode stages, each trade on the feed comes with a plain-English sentence you can check against the strike, expiry and premium. You can then follow a contract through its expiration in the $100K paper account, with no real money at stake. A free account shows options data delayed 16 minutes (60 minutes without an account).

Educational only, not investment advice.