A 13F filing is due within 45 days of the end of each calendar quarter, which puts the four deadlines in mid-February, mid-May, mid-August, and mid-November. If a deadline lands on a weekend or federal holiday, it rolls to the next business day.
Those four weeks are the most interesting on the institutional calendar: they're when the portfolios of the world's largest investors become public, all at once.
The quarterly 13F deadline schedule
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Quarter ends
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Standard deadline (45 days)
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Next occurrence
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March 31
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~May 15
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May 17, 2027 (rolled forward from May 15)
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June 30
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~August 14
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August 14, 2026
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September 30
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~November 14
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November 16, 2026 (rolled forward from November 14)
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December 31
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~February 14
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February 16, 2027 (rolled forward from February 14)
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The 45-day window comes from Section 13(f) of the Securities Exchange Act; the SEC's Form 13F FAQ covers the mechanics, including the business-day rule.
Why most funds file on the last day
Managers can file any time after quarter end, but most large funds wait until the deadline — nobody wants to show their book earlier than required. The practical result is that new portfolio data doesn't trickle in; it drops in waves. In the day or two around each deadline, thousands of filings hit EDGAR at once, and the latest fund portfolios refresh en masse as each one is processed.
That burst is worth planning around. Each deadline week effectively publishes a fresh census of institutional positioning — summarized in the quarterly hedge fund trends report and visible stock by stock in the quarter's largest fund trades.
Amendments, late filings, and 13F-NT
The deadline isn't quite the end of the story. Managers file amendments that restate or correct earlier reports — sometimes weeks later — and a 13F-NT (notice) means a firm's holdings appear inside another manager's filing rather than its own. Occasionally a fund simply files late.
This trailing activity is easy to miss when reading EDGAR by hand, and it can change what a portfolio actually looked like. Wall St. Rank tracks it continuously: amendments are reflected within seconds of publication, and every filing passes through validation and correction before it reaches a fund page — our methodology has the details.
Using the calendar as a 13F follower
If you follow institutional portfolios, the deadline calendar gives you a simple rhythm: four review points a year, a few days after each deadline, once the wave of filings has been processed. Because the managers worth following hold positions for years, checking in quarterly is enough — a deadline week plus a weekend of reading covers it. Our guides on how to read a 13F filing and how to copy trade hedge funds turn those review points into a process.
FAQ
When is the next 13F deadline?
The next deadline is August 14, 2026. New filings appear on Wall St. Rank as they land, so the portfolio index is the quickest way to see whether a quarter's wave has arrived.
What happens if a fund files late?
Late filings happen occasionally and the SEC can pursue enforcement, but for readers the practical effect is simply a gap: the fund's portfolio stays a quarter stale until the filing arrives, at which point it's processed like any other.
Can funds file before the deadline?
Yes — some smaller managers file within days of quarter end. Early filings show up as soon as they're published, which is why fund pages start updating well before each deadline burst.
