IB 2028: complete guide & what to plan now

IB 2028 is the next-cycle planning target for DP candidates and MYP year-5 students after May 2027: a May 2028 Diploma session (Northern Hemisphere, indicatively late April-mid May 2028, results around early July 2028), a November 2028 session (Southern Hemisphere, results around January 2029), and a fixed MYP eAssessment window. Build prep on the stable DP / MYP syllabus and adjust details when the official calendar is confirmed.

The IB 2028 timeline at a glance

• DP May 2028: written exams expected roughly late April to mid-late May 2028 for Northern Hemisphere schools, with results released to candidates around early July 2028.
• DP November 2028: written exams around late October to mid November 2028 for Southern Hemisphere schools, with results around early January 2029.
• MYP 2028: Year 5 on-screen eAssessment and ePortfolios in a fixed window around April-May 2028, with the IB MYP Certificate awarded once a year.

What matters for the 2028 cycle

• Session registration: your school registers you for either the May or November 2028 session - confirm which one and the subject/HL-SL choices early, as changes get hard later.
• Internal assessment deadlines: orals, labs, the Extended Essay and TOK exhibition/essay have school deadlines well before the written exams - map them now.
• Core and projects: DP students must complete CAS; MYP Year 5 students must complete the Personal Project (and the Community Project in year 3/4) for the certificate.

What does the DP1 student's plan look like starting June 2026?

A May 2028 candidate normally begins DP1 in the school's summer or autumn intake of 2026 - so by June 2026 most candidates have either just confirmed their six subjects or are about to. The plan is two years long, and the milestones inside the plan are non-negotiable because internal-assessment deadlines drive registration, predicted grades, and the final exam window. The earlier the plan is set, the more margin there is when an IA goes sideways or a subject choice needs to flex.

How do you make subject choices in DP1 that you won't regret?

Subject choice for the DP is built from the destination, not the starting line. Three structural rules cover most cases. First, the three HL subjects should map onto the courses the candidate is most likely to apply to - engineering needs Mathematics AA HL plus Physics HL, medicine needs Biology HL plus Chemistry HL, economics needs Mathematics HL plus Economics HL. Second, the three SL subjects should round out the profile rather than fight it - a humanities-leaning candidate at the SL level works well alongside HL Mathematics, while a science-heavy HL profile pairs well with SL languages and a Group 3 humanities. Third, Mathematics is the most-asked HL subject across STEM, so flex on it only with a clear non-STEM destination in mind.

The most common subject-choice trap is letting DP1 mid-term marks drive a panic downgrade to SL just before the IB registration window closes. A DP1 student doing poorly in HL Chemistry in December 2026 is often three months from clicking into the material, not from quitting it - and an SL downgrade locked in by November 2027 for the May 2028 session is hard to undo. The right question is whether the trajectory is improving over months, not whether the current grade looks low this month.

How should CAS and the Extended Essay be planned in DP1?

CAS works best when it's started early, runs on the same calendar as classwork, and is documented as it happens. The first CAS interview with the school's CAS coordinator typically falls in the first term of DP1. The second is mid-DP, and the third is end-of-DP2 sign-off. Between those interviews the candidate logs experiences, attaches reflections, and identifies which of the seven IB CAS learning outcomes each experience hits. The CAS Project - the multi-month team or individual venture combining at least two of the three strands - is the most substantial single commitment, and it works best when started in DP1 rather than rushed into DP2.

The Extended Essay timeline runs the other way. Subject choice and a draft research question typically lock in by April-June of DP1 so that supervisor allocation and the first reflection session can complete before DP1 ends. The summer between DP1 and DP2 is the natural window for primary research and reading. Draft writing happens through the autumn of DP2, with the final submission around mid-March 2028 for a May 2028 candidate. Candidates who leave the EE subject decision into DP2 end up doing the EE on top of IAs and Predicted Grades, which is the single hardest stack to write through.

How do you use the end-of-DP1 mock as a calibration?

The end-of-DP1 mock (often run in May or June 2027 for the May 2028 cohort) is the first realistic look at where the candidate's 45-point total is pointing. The point is calibration, not prediction. A student scoring an indicative 32 on the DP1 mock is not destined for 32 in the final session - they are receiving a signal about which subjects are on track and which need a different study approach. The right reaction is to look at the per-subject grade against the failing-conditions matrix and the HL-points minimum, not at the headline total.

A DP1 mock is also the most reliable input to a teacher's eventual Predicted Grade. Internal assessment marks and a DP1 mock together form the bulk of the data the teacher uses when forecasting a final grade in autumn of DP2. So the same mock serves as both a calibration tool and a downstream university-application data point - which is why end-of-DP1 mocks should be taken under exam-style conditions, not casually.

What mock cadence works across the two-year cycle?

• November 2026 (mid-DP1): short subject-level checks rather than a full mock; useful to spot wholesale gaps in DP1 content as it lands.
• May-June 2027 (end of DP1): a full-length DP1 mock under timed conditions, ideally on past papers; the calibration moment.
• November-December 2027 (mid-DP2): the trial-exam mock that feeds the Predicted Grade; full-length, full-format, the most important mock of the cycle.
• February-April 2028 (pre-exam taper): timed past papers run in rolling cycles, with mark-scheme review and targeted re-attempts on weak topics.

How do you curate study resources without drowning?

The IB syllabus is published and stable, so a small set of high-signal resources beats a large set of overlapping ones. The school's subject textbooks and the IB subject guides are the foundation - everything else is a sharpener. Past papers (with mark schemes) from the last several sessions are the highest-value supplement for written-exam practice. For internal assessment, the school's annotated exemplars - real past student work marked against the criteria - are more useful than any external IA guide because they show how the school's moderators actually read the rubric. Beyond those, one good revision book per subject and one trusted open-source video library is usually enough.

Curate ruthlessly: anything in the candidate's study folder that isn't being opened weekly is noise. The same applies to online forums and Discord servers - they can be useful occasional sanity checks but they are not a substitute for working through real past papers and reading the mark scheme.

A final principle for the two-year run: protect the time horizon. A May 2028 candidate sitting in June 2026 has roughly 22 months until the exam window opens. Spending the first 12 months building strong content foundations and the next 10 months converting those foundations into exam-grade performance is a sustainable rhythm. Treating the first year as low-stakes and trying to compress everything into DP2 is the most common pattern that ends in a January 2028 grade-prediction conversation the candidate didn't want.

How to plan now (DP / MYP)

• DP Year 1 now: lock the fundamentals across your six subjects and start the Extended Essay early - most marks reward depth and skill, not last-minute cramming.
• DP Year 2 now: clear internal assessment by the school deadlines, then shift to full-length timed past papers; aim to peak by the May 2028 exams (or November for that session).
• MYP Year 5 now: drive the Personal Project to completion and practise against the criteria A-D descriptors so on-screen eAssessment tasks feel familiar.

Ready to test where you stand? Take a free IB mock and see your indicative point total in one paper.