The UK bulge brackets open October to January, so September held one open programme, one rolling opener on 29 September, and the quant houses.
In short
I applied to UK spring weeks in September 2026, as a first year arriving from abroad. Most of what I had read about the timing was wrong.
The September wave was somebody else's calendar
Coaching sites told me the large banks open in the first three weeks of September. On 18 September I had 113 firms read against their own careers pages. One programme was open. One was shut. Four had published a later opening date. Seven described a spring programme with no form behind it. Ninety-seven had no spring page I could find, and three pages would not load.
The trackers put J.P. Morgan, Barclays and Morgan Stanley in October to January. So September came down to one open programme, one rolling programme opening on 29 September, and the quant houses. October is when the volume arrives. For a first year moving countries that matters, because term starts before the applications do. I put the practice into September and kept my evenings free from October.
The seven programmes, and the date each turns into work
| Firm and programme | Status on 18 September 2026 | Date to act |
|---|---|---|
| Rothschild & Co, 2027 UK Global Advisory Spring Insight | Opens later, rolling once open | 29 September 2026 |
| BlackRock, 2027 Spring Insight Event EMEA | Open, closes 4 December, not rolling | This week |
| Evercore, Spring Insight London | Opens later, students page says rolling | Check 5 October 2026 |
| Macquarie, Spring Insight | Programme described, no form live | Check 11 October 2026 |
| Deloitte, Spring into Deloitte: Advisory and Finance | Opens later, closes once places fill | 9 November 2026 |
| Schroders, Spring Insight Programme | Opens later, two-week window | January 2027 |
The seventh is J.P. Morgan, whose page shows the spring programme shut with no opening date, so I look weekly and apply the day it changes. Two rows above carry a date from a tracker rather than from the firm: Evercore and Macquarie. Those are a day to look, never a day to apply. The live version, all 113 firms, is at https://howardchan.me/tools/.
BlackRock closes on 4 December and does not read applications as they arrive. Rothschild reads them as they arrive and publishes no closing date. That difference sets the order. BlackRock still goes first, in the week of 18 September, to run the whole pipeline once before the firm I care about opens.
The five stages, and what each is reading
Every one of these programmes runs the same five stages: the form, an online test set, a recorded video interview, two back-to-back 30-minute interviews, and an assessment centre.
The form is read by a filter, then by a recruiter for seconds. Be literal. Name the programme exactly as the firm names it. Graduation year on the first line. Then one motivation paragraph per firm, 150 to 250 words, built from three sentences whose shape never changes: what I have actually done that is commercial, one fact about this firm and why it connects, and what I want from the week stated as a question I cannot answer from outside. Rewritten for every firm.
The tests come in three kinds. Numerical and verbal reasoning under time, where the loss on a first sitting is time management, so the plan is one of each against a clock before any real one. Situational judgement, where the key rewards telling the senior person first and then acting, and penalises the answer that solves it alone. Game-based tests, which cannot be practised. The only input I control there is sleep the night before.
The video interview gives four or five questions, 30 seconds to prepare and 90 seconds to answer. Thirty seconds is enough to choose a story and too short to build one. So I wrote five stories and indexed them by the question each one answers: leadership, failure, data, initiative, teamwork. The index is what goes on the post-it.
The assessment centre runs half a day to a full day. The group exercise scores contribution rather than airtime, so I propose a structure in the first two minutes and bring in the quiet person by name. The case exercise wants a recommendation with one number attached, plus the two things that would change it. Lunch is scored too.
Drafting against a form that is not open
Four of the seven forms were shut on 18 September. I wrote the answers anyway, with every question marked unverified and to be confirmed on the day the form opens. The drafts run against what such forms always ask: motivation, plus the team and commercial-awareness examples. When Rothschild opens on 29 September I am editing rather than starting.
The one mistake
Take every date from the firm's own page. Every wrong date I began with came from somewhere else: a coaching site's September wave, a tracker's expected opening, a search result pointing at last year's expired listing. Second-hand dates fail in both directions and both cost. Too early, and I sit waiting for something already open elsewhere. Too late, and a rolling programme has been reading applications for two weeks before mine lands. The firm's page is the only place that carries its own sentence with its own date in it, and reading 113 of them took a morning.