When Do VIX Options Expire? The Wednesday Rule

When do VIX options expire? On a Wednesday morning, rather than the Friday afternoon that governs almost every other listed option. The monthly VIX contract expires on the Wednesday that falls 30 days before the third Friday of the following month, and weekly series fill the remaining Wednesdays. An expiring series trades for the last time on the Tuesday before, and settlement is in cash against the SOQ, a Special Opening Quotation of the VIX computed from the opening prices of S&P 500 index options on that Wednesday morning rather than from the VIX level on any screen. Friday and daily expirations for stocks and ETFs are covered in our guide to when options expire; this page covers the VIX exception only.

When do VIX options expire?

Cboe sets the monthly expiration by counting backward from the S&P 500 options the contract settles against. Take the third Friday of the following month, the day the standard SPX monthly options expire, and step back exactly 30 days. That lands on a Wednesday every time. If that third Friday is an exchange holiday, the count starts from the business day before it, which pushes the VIX expiration onto a Tuesday. The VIX is a 30-day measure, which is why a single SPX expiration exactly 30 days out can stand in for it at settlement.

Weekly VIX options take the other Wednesdays, so the listed calendar is a Wednesday-a-week strip. Cboe adds new weekly expirations a few weeks ahead, and the weekly strip fills in as the year goes on. The twelve monthlies follow from the rule above and are listed in full below.

The 2026 monthly VIX settlement dates

The list below gives every 2026 monthly VIX expiration as published on Cboe's 2026 expiration calendar (checked September 2026), with its weekday and, in parentheses, the SPX expiration exactly 30 days later whose opening prices build the settlement value. Each date is the rule made visible: step back 30 days from the following month's standard SPX expiration and the VIX date falls out.

• January: Wednesday, January 21 (SPX expiration Friday, February 20)
• February: Wednesday, February 18 (Friday, March 20)
• March: Wednesday, March 18 (Friday, April 17)
• April: Wednesday, April 15 (Friday, May 15)
• May: Tuesday, May 19 (Thursday, June 18)
• June: Wednesday, June 17 (Friday, July 17)
• July: Wednesday, July 22 (Friday, August 21)
• August: Wednesday, August 19 (Friday, September 18)
• September: Wednesday, September 16 (Friday, October 16)
• October: Wednesday, October 21 (Friday, November 20)
• November: Wednesday, November 18 (Friday, December 18)
• December: Wednesday, December 16 (Friday, January 15, 2027)

As of September 17, 2026, nine of the twelve have settled; October 21, November 18 and December 16 are the three still ahead. May 19 is the odd one out. It fell on a Tuesday, with its settlement basket expiring on Thursday, June 18: the exchange was closed for Juneteenth on Friday, June 19, so the June SPX monthly settled on the Thursday and the VIX contract expired 30 days before that. The Friday side of the same year lives in the 2026 options expiration calendar.

When do VIX options stop trading?

An expiring VIX series trades for the last time on the business day before its expiration date, the Tuesday for a normal Wednesday expiration. Wednesday itself is settlement day only: there is no session in the expiring series, and whatever is open at the Tuesday close goes to settlement. Take the August 2026 monthly as the worked case. Its expiration date was Wednesday, August 19; the last session in that series was Tuesday, August 18, and the SOQ was struck from the SPX opening auction on the Wednesday morning, with no further trading in the August contracts. The holiday-shifted May contract followed the same pattern with every day moved back one: the expiration date was Tuesday, May 19, and the final session was Monday, May 18.

How are VIX options settled?

VIX options are European-style (exercise happens only at expiration) and cash-settled. An in-the-money call pays the settlement value minus its strike, multiplied by 100; an in-the-money put pays strike minus settlement value, multiplied by 100. Out-of-the-money contracts expire worthless. No shares change hands: the VIX is an index with nothing to deliver.

The settlement value is the SOQ, published under the symbol VRO. It is a one-time calculation of the VIX run on Wednesday morning from the opening prices of the SPX options that expire exactly 30 days later: the following month's third-Friday SPX monthly for a monthly VIX expiration, or the SPX weekly expiring 30 days out for a weekly one. A series that trades in Cboe's opening auction contributes its opening trade price; one with no opening trade contributes the midpoint of its opening bid and ask. The VIX formula is then applied to that single strip of opening prices.

That makes VIX options AM-settled, like the standard SPX monthly and unlike the PM-settled SPX weeklys that share the same Wednesday; our guide to AM- vs PM-settled options walks through what each means for a position held into expiration.

Why can the SOQ land far from Tuesday's close?

Traders new to VIX options often expect the settlement value to match Tuesday's closing VIX, or the VIX printing at 9:30 on Wednesday. It regularly matches neither, and the gap is a matter of construction.

• The time gap. The last trade in the expiring series happens Tuesday afternoon; the SOQ is struck from Wednesday's opening auction, roughly 17 hours later. Everything that moves the S&P 500 overnight shows up in Wednesday's opening option prices, and the expiring VIX contract has no session left in which to catch up.
• Different inputs. The live VIX is computed every 15 seconds from bid-ask midpoints across two SPX expirations, blended to a constant 30 days. The SOQ uses actual opening trades, or opening midpoints, from one expiration exactly 30 days out, each series contributing a single auction print. The formula gives heavy weight to puts struck well below the market, and those series are the thinnest at the open, so one opening trade or one wide opening quote on a far-below-market strike moves the SOQ more than it moves the live index, which quotes the same strike from a continuously refreshed midpoint. The strike range also extends until two consecutive strikes show zero bids, and the opening book decides where that cutoff lands.

In practice the settlement value can sit above or below both the Tuesday close and the Wednesday 9:30 print. Why VIX options don't track the VIX covers the companion lesson: before expiration, VIX options price off the VIX future for their month rather than the spot index, and the SOQ is the moment the future and the option finally converge on one number.

Which options expire on Wednesday?

VIX options share the day with a growing list of index and ETF products. SPX weeklys (root SPXW) have carried Wednesday series since 2016, PM-settled, and SPX now lists an expiration on every trading day; Mini-SPX (XSP) follows the same Monday-to-Friday schedule. SPY and QQQ also carry daily expirations, so a Wednesday series exists on each. As of September 2026, options on individual stocks still expire on Fridays. The panel ranks, by contracts traded over the final two weeks, the underlyings that had series expiring on Wednesday, September 2, 2026, a VIX weekly date; weekly roots such as SPXW or VIXW may appear as their own rows.

SELECT
    underlying_symbol                            AS underlying,
    uniqExact(ticker)                            AS series_traded,
    round(toFloat64(sum(volume)) / 1000, 1)      AS volume_thousands
FROM global_markets.options_greeks
WHERE toDate(expiration_date) = toDate('2026-09-02')
  AND volume > 0
  AND date BETWEEN toDate('2026-08-19') AND toDate('2026-09-02')
  AND underlying_symbol NOT IN ('SPCX')
GROUP BY underlying_symbol
ORDER BY volume_thousands DESC
LIMIT 12

12 underlyings appear, led by SPY with 2022 thousand contracts traded in that Wednesday's series over its final two weeks. Across the Wednesday products, VIX is the only one that settles on the morning against an opening quotation; the index weeklys settle to that day's closing level, and the ETF series settle by delivery of shares.

FAQ

What day of the week do VIX options expire?

Wednesday. The monthly VIX expiration is the Wednesday 30 days before the third Friday of the following month, and weekly VIX options expire on the remaining Wednesdays. When that third Friday is an exchange holiday the monthly shifts to a Tuesday, as it did on May 19, 2026.

What is the last trading day for VIX options?

The business day before the expiration date, which is the Tuesday for a normal Wednesday expiration. There is no trading in the expiring series on the Wednesday itself; positions still open at the Tuesday close are settled in cash against the SOQ.

How is the VIX settlement value (SOQ) calculated?

The SOQ is a Special Opening Quotation of the VIX computed once, on the Wednesday morning, from the opening prices of the SPX options that expire exactly 30 days later. Series that trade in Cboe's opening auction contribute their opening trade price; series with no opening trade contribute the midpoint of the opening bid and ask. Cboe publishes the value under the symbol VRO.

Are VIX options AM-settled or PM-settled?

AM-settled. The settlement value comes from Wednesday's opening prices, so the outcome is fixed shortly after the open rather than at the close. SPX and XSP weeklys expiring the same Wednesday are PM-settled, off that day's closing prices.

Do any stock options expire on Wednesday?

As of September 2026, options on individual stocks expire only on Fridays. Wednesday expirations belong to index products (VIX, SPX, XSP, NDX) and to ETF options with daily expirations, SPY and QQQ among them.

The Wednesday panel above carries its exact SQL underneath; expand it to see how the expiring series were counted. The options feed behind it does not carry the VIX contracts themselves; the monthly calendar above is quoted from Cboe's published schedule rather than read from listed series. To see what traded into any Wednesday expiration, ask the question in plain English on the Strasmore terminal.