Mizzou Commencement: Ten Ceremonies, Two Buildings, 18 and 19 December

Ten ceremonies, and two of them might be yours

Missouri does not hold a commencement. It holds ten, across two days, in two buildings.

Friday 18 December 2026 carries four, from 1:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.: Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources at 1:00, Education and Human Development at 2:00, Arts and Science at 4:00, and Health Sciences at 7:00.

Saturday 19 December carries six, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.: the Honors College at 8:30, Trulaske College of Business at 10:30, Nursing at 11:00, Engineering at 1:00, the Missouri School of Journalism at 2:00, and the Graduate School at 4:00.

A family with one graduate attends one of those ten. A family with two graduates in different colleges may be attending on both days, or twice on the same day two hours apart.

The full December schedule, by college

Mizzou publishes a time and a building against every college. Here it is.

When	College	Where
Fri 18 Dec, 1:00 p.m.	Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources	Hearnes Center
Fri 18 Dec, 2:00 p.m.	Education and Human Development	Jesse Auditorium
Fri 18 Dec, 4:00 p.m.	Arts and Science	Hearnes Center
Fri 18 Dec, 7:00 p.m.	Health Sciences	Hearnes Center
Sat 19 Dec, 8:30 a.m.	Honors College	Jesse Auditorium
Sat 19 Dec, 10:30 a.m.	Trulaske College of Business	Hearnes Center
Sat 19 Dec, 11:00 a.m.	Nursing	Jesse Auditorium
Sat 19 Dec, 1:00 p.m.	Engineering	Hearnes Center
Sat 19 Dec, 2:00 p.m.	Missouri School of Journalism	Jesse Auditorium
Sat 19 Dec, 4:00 p.m.	Graduate School: doctoral, education specialist, master’s	Hearnes Center

Two ceremonies you cannot both attend

Read the Saturday column again, because the schedule contains a conflict Mizzou does not flag.

Trulaske Business begins at 10:30 a.m. in the Hearnes Center. Nursing begins at 11:00 a.m. in Jesse Auditorium. They overlap. So do Engineering at 1:00 p.m. in the Hearnes and Journalism at 2:00 p.m. in Jesse, since a ceremony does not finish in an hour.

The two buildings are walkable from one another on the same campus, so this is not a driving problem. It is an arithmetic one: a family with a business graduate and a nursing graduate has to choose, and no booking decision fixes it. If that is you, the thing to sort out is which ceremony each parent attends, not which hotel.

The milder version of the same trap catches everyone else: check the building, not just the day. A family that has the hour right and the venue wrong, on a Saturday with six ceremonies running back to back, does not recover quickly.

Reading the day, practically

The Friday shape is an afternoon and evening. A 7:00 p.m. Health Sciences ceremony ends late enough that nobody is driving to Kansas City afterwards, and Columbia’s own rooms are largely gone by then.

The Saturday shape is a full working day, opening at 8:30 a.m. An 8:30 start is the hardest arrival on this cluster, particularly for families pushed out to Jefferson City by Columbia’s room shortage.

ROTC commissioning ceremonies for the Air Force, Army and Naval programmes were listed as to be determined at this check, with no dates or times attached. If that applies to your family, it is the one piece still outstanding.

What we checked, and what we could not

Every ceremony time, venue and college assignment on this page comes from Missouri’s own December 2026 commencement schedule, read on 6 August 2026. Both weekdays were verified against the calendar independently.

Not established: ROTC commissioning times, ticket limits, and parking arrangements for either venue. The ROTC gap is the university’s own “to be determined” rather than a hole in our research.