When do options expire? The third-Friday rule, worked through for the next three months
Standard monthly options expire on the third Friday of the month. Worked through: 2026-11-20, 2026-12-18 (quarterly) and 2027-01-15.
Standard monthly options expire on the third Friday of the expiration month, or on the business day before it if the exchange is closed that Friday. That one rule sets the monthly calendar for stock options, index options and ETF options like SPY. Applied to the next three months, it gives 2026-11-20, 2026-12-18 and 2027-01-15. This post shows the rule, works it through on real calendar dates, and explains where quarterly "triple witching" and the weekly and daily expirations fit around it.
What the rule is and where it comes from
Every listed option has an expiration date, the last day the contract exists. For the standard monthly contracts, the exchanges set that date with a fixed rule: the third Friday of the month, moved to the preceding business day if the exchange is closed that Friday. Cboe's product specifications for S&P 500 index options (SPX) state it, and the same third-Friday convention appears in Cboe's rule filings with the SEC.12
The monthly expiration day is often shortened to OPEX, for "options expiration."
For SPX there is one detail worth knowing. The standard SPX contract is AM-settled: its settlement value comes from the opening prices on expiration day, not the close. Cboe also lists PM-settled SPX options (SPXW) on the same third Friday.1 So two contracts can share an expiration date and still settle off different prices.
Why the third Friday always falls between the 15th and the 21st
The first Friday of any month lands somewhere between the 1st and the 7th. The third Friday is two weeks later, so its date is the first Friday's date plus 14:
That pins down the earliest and latest possible dates:
A monthly expiration can never be on the 14th or the 22nd. If you see a third-Friday date outside 15 to 21, it has been miscounted.
The rule, worked through as of 2026-10-18
Here are the Fridays of the four months around today, with the third one picked out. The most recent standard expiration, Friday 2026-10-16, has just passed.1
| Month | Fridays | Third Friday | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| October 2026 | 2, 9, 16, 23, 30 | 2026-10-16 | Most recent |
| November 2026 | 6, 13, 20, 27 | 2026-11-20 | Next monthly |
| December 2026 | 4, 11, 18, 25 | 2026-12-18 | Quarterly |
| January 2027 | 1, 8, 15, 22, 29 | 2027-01-15 | Monthly |
Each one is the first Friday plus 14:
The holiday check. The rule only moves expiration to the preceding business day if the exchange is closed that Friday. None of these four third Fridays is a listed NYSE holiday. December 25 and January 1 are holidays, but neither is a third Friday, so all four dates stand.
What quarterly "triple witching" means
On the third Friday of March, June, September and December, three kinds of contracts expire on the same day: stock options, stock index options and stock index futures. That quarterly overlap is called "triple witching."3 In the table above, 2026-12-18 is the next one.
You will also see the older term "quadruple witching." It counted a fourth product, single-stock futures, which expired on the same quarterly Fridays from their 2002 US launch.3 US single-stock futures stopped trading when OneChicago closed on 2020-09-18, after the SEC granted its withdrawal.4 CME Group launched new cash-settled single-stock futures on 2026-07-27.5 This post does not cover when the new CME contracts expire. Our glossary entry on quad witching covers the term.
Weekly and daily expirations
The third Friday is not the only expiration. Exchanges also list weekly and daily expirations, and for SPX and SPY there is an expiration every trading day. Contracts that expire on the day they trade are called 0DTE. The third Friday still concentrates the standard monthly contracts, which is why it keeps its own name.
How to read an expiration date, and why options traders care
An expiration date is the end of a contract's life. On that day, each option either has value at expiration and is exercised or settled, or it expires worthless. After it, the contract no longer exists, so it drops out of open interest, the count of contracts still open.
That is why the date matters before you read anything else about an option. Two contracts with the same strike but different expirations are different contracts, with different prices and different amounts of time left. When you read a contract, check which expiration it is: a standard monthly third Friday, a quarterly one, or a weekly or daily one.
Expiration days are one kind of scheduled date on the options calendar. Scheduled economic releases are another, and our explainer on CPI and PPI covers how those are published.
How to practice this
Open a CaymanBot account and, for a handful of trades on the feed, check the expiration date of each contract against the rule: is it a third Friday between the 15th and the 21st, 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 hold a contract through to 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.
Notes
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Cboe, SPX options product specifications (expiration date and settlement). https://certification.cboe.com/tradable_products/sp_500/spx_options/specifications ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
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Cboe rule filing with the SEC, Release No. 34-98454 (2023). https://www.sec.gov/files/rules/sro/cboe/2023/34-98454.pdf ↩︎
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Corporate Finance Institute, "Quadruple Witching." https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/capital_markets/quadruple-witching/ ↩︎ ↩︎
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SEC order granting OneChicago's withdrawal from registration, Release No. 34-90764 (2020). https://SEC.gov/files/rules/other/2020/34-90764.pdf ↩︎
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CME Group press release, 2026-06-30, on launching single-stock futures on July 27. https://www.cmegroup.com/media-room/press-releases/2026/6/30/cme_group_to_launchsinglestockfuturesonjuly27.html ↩︎
Options data from OPRA, delayed at least 60 minutes.
Frequently asked questions
When do standard monthly options expire?
On the third Friday of the expiration month. If the exchange is closed that Friday, they expire on the preceding business day instead.
What are the next standard monthly expiration dates?
Applying the third-Friday rule to the calendar gives 2026-11-20, 2026-12-18 and 2027-01-15. The most recent one was 2026-10-16.
What is triple witching?
It is the third Friday of March, June, September and December, when stock options, stock index options and stock index futures all expire on the same day.
What was quadruple witching?
The older term counted a fourth product, single-stock futures, which expired on the same quarterly Fridays after their 2002 US launch. US single-stock futures stopped trading when OneChicago closed in 2020.
Do options only expire once a month?
No. Exchanges also list weekly and daily expirations, and for SPX and SPY there is an expiration every trading day. The third Friday is where the standard monthly contracts expire.