Two days, and the Friday is not the warm-up

NC A&T’s next commencement is Friday 11 and Saturday 12 December 2026.

The registrar has published the running order: the graduate ceremony on Friday 11 December at 6 p.m., processional 5:45, and the undergraduate ceremony on Saturday 12 December at 9 a.m., processional 8:45. Both are at First Horizon Coliseum at the Greensboro Complex. Parking is free and tickets are not required. Spring 2027 repeats the two-day shape, Friday 7 and Saturday 8 May.

That split is the most useful fact here, and it is the one most likely to be got wrong. A family travelling for a master’s or doctoral graduate needs the Friday. A family travelling for an undergraduate needs the Saturday. Book the wrong one and you have a hotel reservation for a day your graduate is not walking.

The booking window on this page covers both nights, because most families flying in will want them.

Where the dates live

NC A&T publishes the running order for the current round on the registrar’s commencement page, which now leads on Fall 2026. The dates for later rounds sit in the university’s catalog academic calendar, where the Aggie Flight Path calendar lists the commencement ceremonies for both December 2026 and May 2027.

Both weekday labels hold: 11 December 2026 is a Friday, 12 December a Saturday. The series steps sensibly year on year too, May 10 2025, May 9 2026, May 8 2027, all Saturdays.

What a round actually looks like

The calendar gives two rows. The May 2026 round ran three ceremonies.

NC A&T held the graduate ceremony on the Friday at 6 p.m., and split the undergraduates across two ceremonies on the Saturday, at 9 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., by college. All three were at First Horizon Coliseum at the Greensboro Complex.

December is simpler: one undergraduate ceremony, at 9 a.m. on the Saturday, so every undergraduate family is there at the same hour. The May 2027 running order is not published yet, and May has used two undergraduate ceremonies before, so check again in the spring.

The market you are booking into

NC A&T is the nation’s largest HBCU, and its ceremonies draw the multi-generational family travel that also makes its homecoming famous. The GHOE centennial page covers what the university’s own vice chancellor says about how fast Greensboro’s host hotel fills, and while that quote is about homecoming rather than graduation, it is the same market and the same travelling families.

For a December round the practical difference is weather and daylight rather than crowd size. Greensboro in mid-December is a different arrival than Greensboro in May.

What is still unpublished

The May 2027 running order: the start times, and whether the undergraduates are again split across two ceremonies by college.

The venue for December and for either 2027 round. First Horizon Coliseum is where NC A&T held May 2026, and the catalog carries dates without venues, so it is named here as the university’s venue of record rather than a confirmed booking.

Ticket or guest limits for any round. Nothing on either page states one, and none is inferred here.