No Round Two Offer? What Actually Happens Next in CAO 2026

Round Two closed the gap for 3,197 applicants on 7 September. If you were not one of them, there are three more offer rounds, a live Available Places list of almost 150 courses, and a set of routes that do not run through CAO at all. Here is what actually happens between now and early October, with the dates and the evidence for how much points still move.

The dates that matter now

• Wednesday 9 September, 3pm — reply date for Round Two offers.
• Tuesday 15 September, 10am — Round Three offers. Reply by 3pm Thursday 17 September.
• Tuesday 22 September, 10am — Round Four offers. Reply by 3pm Thursday 24 September.
• Tuesday 29 September, 10am — Round Five offers. Reply by 3pm Thursday 1 October.
• Ongoing — Available Places offers issue weekly until early October.

Points keep moving after Round Two

Round Two 2026 brought 184 courses down from their Round One score, by a median of 9 points. That is not the end of it.

In the 2025 cycle, 196 courses scored on plain Leaving Cert points ended the season below their Round One score — 217 if you include portfolio and audition courses. The median fall was 10 points, 49 courses came down 20 points or more, and 12 came down 50 or more. The largest single fall was 192 points.

More usefully: 62 of the 258 courses that made Round Two offers in 2025 fell again after Round Two, and 27 courses that made no Round Two offer at all still finished the season below their Round One score. A course going quiet in Round Two does not mean it is finished.

The courses that fell furthest after Round One in 2025

This is what a late-round fall looks like in practice.

Do nothing to your CAO application

You are automatically reconsidered for every course above the one you were offered, in every remaining round. There is no form to submit and no one to email. Changing your preference order now is not possible and would not help if it were.

If you accepted an offer in an earlier round, that acceptance does not block you from a higher preference later. If a better offer comes in Round Three, accepting it cancels the old acceptance automatically.

Available Places

Almost 150 courses are advertised on the CAO Available Places facility, and offers issue from it weekly until early October. These are real places on real courses that did not fill in the main rounds, and some of them are in institutions that were competitive on other courses.

• It is free if you are already a 2026 CAO applicant. You add the course from your CAO account.
• New applicants can join for a €50 fee by completing the online application form.
• The list changes as places fill, so check it more than once.

The one thing to be careful about: Available Places are still awarded on merit where more than one person applies. Adding a course does not guarantee an offer.

The routes that do not run through CAO

PLC and QQI Level 5

A one-year Level 5 or two-year Level 6 course in a further education college gives you a qualification in its own right and a scored route into a reserved quota of Level 8 places the following year, competing against other QQI applicants rather than against Leaving Cert points. 12,917 applicants presented QQI FET results to CAO in 2026, so this is a well-worn path rather than a fallback. Our guides on QQI FET entry and CAO versus PLC go through how the quotas work.

Apprenticeships

There are now apprenticeships running to Level 8 and beyond in areas including software development, accounting, engineering, insurance and biopharma. You are paid while you train and there are no fees. Recruitment runs on the employer's timetable, not CAO's, so vacancies appear year round. See our guide to apprenticeships in Ireland.

The Level 7 ladder

Take the Level 7, do well in it, and transfer into year two or three of the Level 8 in the same institution. The entry points are lower, the exit award is the same, and colleges publish the progression requirement in advance. Our ladder progression guide lists the routes by institution. If a Level 7 offer is sitting in your account, this is usually the strongest thing in front of you.

Repeating

Repeating works when there is a specific, fixable gap — a subject that went wrong, a level you should have sat at higher, a year disrupted by something outside your control. It works badly as a general second attempt at everything. Be honest about which one you are looking at, and note that you would be competing in a cycle where points rose on more courses than they fell on this year.

Reapplying next year

The CAO application facility opens for 2027 applications on 5 November 2026. Your existing Leaving Cert results carry forward, so reapplying does not mean sitting anything again. The 2027 fee deadlines are set out in our CAO 2027 key dates guide.

If you are holding an offer you are not sure about

CAO's own framing is the right one: most offers have been made by now, and for many applicants the current offer is the only one they will get. Accepting it costs you nothing in later rounds, and it is far easier to give up a place you hold than to find one in October.

If you want to take the place but not this year, deferral is arranged directly with the college's admissions office, not with CAO. Email them before the reply date with "Deferred Entry" in the subject line.

Work out your options properly. CourseCompass has a free CAO points calculator, the full 2026 vs 2025 points table and a course-matching engine covering every Irish course, so you can see what your points actually open up.

Sources

• CAO offer round dates and reply dates 2026
• CAO Round Two 2026 statement, 7 September 2026
• CAO press release, 26 August 2026 (Available Places fee, application figures)
• CAO points charts 2025 (Excel), Round One and final round scores
• CAO points charts 2026
• CAO timetable of events (2027 application facility opening date)