Options Expiration Calendar 2026: All 12 Dates
The full 2026 options expiration calendar: twelve monthly third Fridays, the four quarterly dates, and the holiday rule that can shift one to a Thursday.
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The full 2026 options expiration calendar: twelve monthly third Fridays, the four quarterly dates, and the holiday rule that can shift one to a Thursday.
If an option expires in the money by at least $0.01, the OCC exercises it automatically. See what the long and short sides owe, and what pin risk costs.
AM settled index options settle off Friday's opening quotation and stop trading Thursday. PM settled options run to the close. The gap between them, measured.
Max pain is the strike where option holders collect the least at expiry. See the calculation on a real SPY chain and how close settlement actually landed.
SPY, QQQ and IWM list a new options expiration every trading day, and the index roots go deeper. See which tickers carry dailies and which only get Fridays.
Triple witching 2026 falls on March 20, June 18, September 18 and December 18. See how market-wide dollar volume moved on the last witching session.
DTE stands for days to expiration: calendar days, not trading days, until an option expires, and expiry day counts as zero. How to count it on a real chain.
Triple witching is the quarterly session when index futures, index options and stock options expire together. Volume and volatility, measured on the real tape.
Most options stop trading at the 4:00 PM ET close on expiration Friday; weeklies expire Fridays, monthlies the third Friday, and SPY and QQQ expire daily.
0DTE options expire the same day they trade, zero days to expiry. What DTE means, how traders build a 0DTE trade, and one real contract traced to the bell.