The event calendar.

Every quarter this calendar lists the named events the house is covering, with dates as confirmed by the named sources on each guide. Four pre-event explainers land each quarter, written before the event, so the guide is ready before the search wave. Reviewed 29 September 2026.

How to read this calendar

Each row is one named event: the date as its guide states it, the desk that owns the coverage, and the link to the guide itself. The guide is the living thing — it carries its own verification date and the sources the date came from. The calendar is the map. When a date moves, the guide changes first and this page follows, because the house rule is a date on anything time-sensitive and a source behind every date. If a row here and a guide disagree, the guide is newer; if a guide and its source disagree, re-read the source and tell us.

October – December 2026

• 21 Sep 2026 – 30 Mar 2027: AFCON 2027 qualifying — 48 countries, the finals field settling window by window. Sport. → AFCON 2027, explained
• 31 Oct 2026: UK Self Assessment paper-return deadline for 2025-26. Money. → Self Assessment deadlines
• Mid-Dec 2026 – 3 Jan 2027: PDC World Darts Championship, Alexandra Palace — the final is Sunday 3 January 2027. Sport. → How the championship works
• December 2026: Detty December, Lagos — the concerts, block parties and diaspora homecoming season. Entertainment. → Detty December, explained
• 26 Dec 2026: Boxing Day football — the Premier League’s traditional festive matchday. Sport. → the Sport desk
• 30 Dec 2026: UK Self Assessment PAYE-collection option closes. Money. → Self Assessment deadlines

Two rhythms, one page: the dated rows and the guides behind them. The rows are copied from the guides’ own verified dates, never entered by hand twice; when a source moves a date, the correction lands on the guide first and this page is re-stamped on the next build. That is why the calendar carries a review date like any other page rather than pretending to be a live feed — it is edited, dated work, and it says so.

The December stretch is the densest part of the quarter. Two events share the calendar almost every year and they pull in different directions: the darts at Ally Pally runs on a fixed session schedule from mid-December to 3 January, while Detty December is a city-wide season with no single timetable — its events are announced by their promoters through the autumn. The sports desk covers the darts mechanics; the entertainment desk explains the Lagos season; the money desk keeps the tax dates visible in the middle of both, because deadlines do not respect festivals.

January – March 2027

• 1 – 31 Jan 2027: the January transfer window. Sport. → How the transfer window works
• 3 Jan 2027: PDC World Championship final. Sport. → How the championship works
• 31 Jan 2027: UK Self Assessment online filing and payment deadline (11:59pm). Money. → Self Assessment deadlines
• 30 Mar 2027: AFCON 2027 qualifying ends. Sport. → AFCON 2027, explained

January is a two-desk month: the transfer window is the sport desk’s daily story, and the 31st is the money desk’s annual one. Both rewards preparation — the window’s last 48 hours and the filing deadline’s last 48 hours produce the same shape of panic in different people. The AFCON qualifying run then closes in March, which hands the sport desk a summer story that the calendar will carry as soon as CAF confirms the draw and venues.

On the horizon

19 June – 17 July 2027: the AFCON 2027 finals in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania — the last AFCON on the two-year cycle. The explainer is kept current as CAF confirms venues and the draw. Beyond the finals, the quarter that owns them will list what replaces the old rhythm: the new four-year AFCON cycle and the Africa Nations League windows from 2029 are exactly the kind of calendar change this page exists to make legible.

The quarterly batch

Four pre-event explainers land each quarter, each written and verified before its event so the guide is ready when attention arrives. This quarter’s four: how the PDC World Darts Championship works, AFCON 2027 explained, Detty December explained and UK Self Assessment deadlines. The next batch is chosen from the same evidence: a dated event the desks already cover well, with a query wave we can answer honestly before it breaks. Announcements for the next four appear on this page as they land.

Why pre-event

Most event coverage arrives when the attention does — a preview on the eve, a recap after. That order serves the reader who already knows the event exists. The pre-event batch exists for the other reader: the one who hears the name in October and wants to understand the format, the dates and the rules before the first ball, dart or filing deadline arrives. A guide written in September is calm in a way a guide written during the event cannot be: it can explain the structure without the scoreline, source the dates before they are contested, and be corrected in the open while there is still time for the correction to matter. When the event runs, the guide is already the search result that answers the question underneath the noise — not who won, but how any of this works. That is the whole theory of this page, and it is why the calendar and the batch are published together: the map and the four places worth going.

What this calendar is not

It is not a ticketing site, a fixtures feed or a results service. Rows exist only where the house has a dated, sourced guide to point at — where there is no guide, there is no row, however big the event. It carries no prices, no odds and no availability, and the house does not publish betting content. Event dates move; the guides carry their own verification dates and the named sources, so re-read the guide before booking anything. The one discipline that keeps the page honest is the one that keeps every page here honest: a row we cannot source is a row we do not publish.

Where each desk sits

Sport owns the tournaments, windows and matchdays. Entertainment owns the screen calendar and the cultural seasons. Money owns the tax and filing dates. Writers keeps its own writing deadline calendar for calls and fellowships — a different kind of event, with the same sourcing rule. Tech, Fitness and Home & DIY cover seasonal stories inside their guides rather than as dated rows; when one of their stories earns a dated row, it will appear here with its guide, like everything else.