Two sittings, and they are not interchangeable

Fall commencement is Saturday 19 December 2026, at the Ferrell Center on the Waco campus. The weekday checks out. Spring follows on 14-15 May 2027, also at the Ferrell Center, with sittings at 9:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. on both days.

Baylor splits December by school and publishes exactly who sits where.

Sitting	Schools and colleges
9:30 a.m.	Diana R. Garland School of Social Work · Engineering and Computer Science · School of Music · Hankamer School of Business · Louise Herrington School of Nursing · Moody School of Education · all related graduate programs
2:30 p.m.	Robbins College of Health and Human Sciences · Honors College, Great Texts and University Scholars majors · College of Arts and Sciences · all related graduate programs

Check yours rather than assuming the morning. These are genuinely different trips: doors for the 9:30 open at 8 a.m., which is not a drive-in-that-morning start from Temple or Killeen, while the 2:30 comfortably is.

Ceremonies run two to two-and-a-half hours. So the morning block is roughly 8 a.m. to noon and the afternoon roughly 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

No tickets, no limit, and a fifteen-minute rule

Baylor is one of the more generous universities covered here on access, and one of the strictest on what you can carry.

“Tickets are not required for access to the ceremonies.” Seating is first-come, first-served. There is no allocation to request, no window to miss and no cap on how many people come, which is worth knowing before you book rooms, because the number in your party is entirely your own decision.

The trade for that is arriving early. And there is a specific cutoff: guests may hold seats for others in their party up to 15 minutes before the ceremony starts. Once it begins, any open seat is fair game for whoever is still looking. If half your group is parking, that rule decides whether you sit together.

The bag policy is the thing that ruins mornings

This is where Baylor surprises people, because a graduation is being run to a Big 12 stadium standard.

Everyone, graduates and faculty included, walks through metal detectors. The clear bag policy permits one clear plastic, vinyl or PVC bag within Baylor’s published size limit, or a one-gallon resealable freezer bag, plus a small clutch of roughly 4.5 by 6.5 inches.

Prohibited, explicitly and in conjunction with the Big 12 Conference:

Diaper bags. Strollers. Backpacks. Umbrellas. Also outside food and drink, chairbacks and cushions, balloons, signs, banners and poles, artificial noisemakers, tripods and camera lenses over four inches, and outside flower arrangements.

Read the first four again if you are travelling with a baby or a grandparent. A diaper bag is banned outright, a stroller cannot come in, and the ceremony plus early doors is a four-hour commitment. Baylor’s own instruction is that anything you would carry in a diaper bag must fit in a compliant clear bag, which in practice means the freezer bag.

Two softer notes. Medically necessary bags and equipment are excepted, inspected at entry. And on flowers: outside arrangements are not allowed, but Baylor runs floral kiosks on site and takes pre-orders for pickup at the Ferrell Center.

One small inconsistency worth flagging rather than smoothing over. Baylor’s FAQ gives the clear bag maximum as 12 by 6 by 12 inches; the Ferrell Center page gives it as 12 by 6. If you are near the limit, pack to the smaller figure or use the freezer bag, which both pages accept without qualification.

Parking, and the shuttle most people miss

The Ferrell Center lot opens off University Parks Drive and LaSalle Avenue. Accessible parking comes in from the Daughtrey Street entrance off South University Parks Drive, and there is a circular drive at the main entrance for dropping guests. If someone has limited mobility, Baylor’s instruction is to ask a parking attendant for curbside drop-off before you go and park.

The part worth planning around: a Waco Transit shuttle runs from the East Village Parking Garage, picking up at 3rd and Daughtrey, starting 90 minutes before each ceremony. That is the same moment doors open, so if you intend to use it, it does not buy you a later start.

Wheelchair seating is inside the arena with rows in front for family, and ushers will guide you to it. The Ferrell Center does not lend wheelchairs, so bring your own.

Baylor also answers its own question about traffic with a straight yes, encouraging visitors to check real-time conditions and plan for delays.

What August tells you, and why it is not on this page’s clock

Baylor’s site currently headlines a nearer ceremony than December: Saturday, August 15, 2026, also at the Ferrell Center, 9:30 a.m. for most schools and 2:30 p.m. for research doctorates.

If that is your graduate’s ceremony, everything above about doors, bags, seating and parking applies unchanged. The booking window on this page is set to December because August is days away and the rooms question has effectively already resolved itself.

Absent rather than estimated

Not published at the time of writing: spring-specific ticketing or parking notices, and December-specific ones had not been posted either, though the standing Ferrell Center rules above apply to commencement by name.

Nothing from the August ceremony has been carried across to describe December. Where the two differ, and the school split does differ, this page uses December’s own listing.

For where to sleep, and why Waco’s risk is collision rather than shortage, see where to stay. If you are looking at Waco in the autumn instead, Homecoming runs 2 to 7 November.