UGA Commencement: Friday 11 December 2026, then May 2027

The next ceremony is in December

UGA’s next commencement is five months before the spring round, and it is the one to plan for first.

When	Ceremony
Friday 11 December 2026	Commencement (listed as one combined ceremony)
Thursday 6 May 2027	Graduate Commencement
Friday 7 May 2027	Undergraduate Commencement

All three come from UGA’s own registrar academic calendar, which labels the weekdays itself, and each was checked independently.

The December date sits inside the calendar’s Fall Semester 2026 block, and the year is not in doubt: five separate weekday labels in that block agree with 2026 and with no neighbouring year, and 11 December falls on a Friday only in 2026.

What UGA has published about December

UGA’s commencement site now carries the December round: Friday 11 December 2026, Undergraduate at 10 a.m. and Graduate at 2:30 p.m., both in Stegeman Coliseum. Until recently that site was still on the spring 2026 cycle and said nothing about December, and this page declined to name a venue for that reason. It names one now because UGA does.

The registrar’s calendar lists December as a single combined “Commencement” line. The commencement site is the more specific of the two, and it shows two ceremonies on the day.

Not published: ticket detail for December, and a venue and times for the spring ceremonies. If you see Stegeman or Sanford Stadium quoted for May, that is the 2026 spring pattern, not a 2027 announcement.

Two ceremonies, two days, in the spring

The spring round works differently, and the separation is the most important scheduling fact about it.

Graduate Commencement is Thursday 6 May 2027. Undergraduate Commencement is Friday 7 May 2027. They run on consecutive days rather than at the same time, which is deliberate and helpful: a family with one graduate finishing a master’s and another finishing a bachelor’s can attend both. What they cannot do is attend both and go home the same evening.

UGA has published no 2027 venue or start time for either spring ceremony. One caution on the dates themselves: UGA’s commencement site says the spring ceremony dates are May 7-8, 2027, which differs from the registrar’s May 6 and 7 above. This page carries the registrar’s dates and flags the conflict rather than choosing.

The 2026 spring pattern, and the one part that changes your booking

Useful as shape rather than schedule. In spring 2026:

Ceremony	When	Where	Doors
Graduate, Master’s and Specialist	Thu, 10:00 a.m.	Stegeman Coliseum	8:00 a.m.
Graduate, Doctoral	Thu, 2:30 p.m.	Stegeman Coliseum	1:30 p.m.
Undergraduate	Fri, 7:30 p.m.	Sanford Stadium	5:30 p.m.

Two things follow, and the second is the one that costs money.

The graduate day was two ceremonies, not one. Master’s and specialist candidates in the morning, doctoral candidates in the afternoon, four and a half hours apart in the same building.

The undergraduate ceremony was an EVENING event. A 7:30 p.m. start with doors at 5:30 p.m. means nobody drives home to Atlanta afterwards, and the night you need is the Friday rather than the Thursday. If you have been planning around a daytime ceremony, that is the assumption to check the moment UGA publishes.

Tickets, at the 2026 cycle: not required for guests at either ceremony. They were required for undergraduate graduates who wanted to sit on the field, delivered electronically and shown on a phone. That is a rule about your graduate, not about you.

And one durable fact about the building rather than the round: Stegeman Coliseum operates a weapons detection system for all events, and every guest and graduate passes through it, so UGA advises arriving early.

What to book now

The booking window this page passes to the map runs from the night before the ceremony to the morning after it, and it is now built on the December date because that is the next round.

If you are travelling for 11 December, a 10 a.m. undergraduate start makes the Thursday night the sensible booking for a family travelling in, and the 2:30 p.m. graduate ceremony is a gentler day. That reading of the schedule is ours, not UGA’s.

If you are travelling for May, the split costs most families two nights, and three for families attending both ceremonies, spread against a campus whose only on-site hotel has 200 rooms.

What we checked, and what we could not

All three dates come from UGA’s own Office of the Registrar academic calendar, re-read on 18 August 2026, and the December venue and times from UGA’s commencement site, read on 17 October 2026. Weekdays were verified independently and match the registrar’s own labels: 11 December 2026 is a Friday, 6 May 2027 a Thursday and 7 May 2027 a Friday.

That calendar carries a separate block per semester, and the December date sits in the fall block rather than the spring one, which is worth knowing if you are checking it yourself: the spring ceremonies are listed further down the same page.

Not published, and each a real absence: a venue and start time for either spring ceremony, ticket limits per graduate, and a weather plan for whichever spring venue is used. Unresolved: the spring dates, because UGA’s registrar (6 and 7 May) and its commencement site (7 and 8 May) disagree.