Canvas course availability for instructors


This page provides an overview of when Canvas course sites for official UW courses are available to instructors and administrators on each campus.

To access your full list of courses, including those for past or future quarters, follow these steps:

  1. Go to http://canvas.uw.edu and log in with your UW NetID.
  2. In the left sidebar, click Courses.
  3. Scroll down and click All Courses. A list of all your provisioned courses will appear.
  4. To customize which courses appear in the Courses menu and on your Canvas dashboard, click the star to the left of the course title.

When will my course be available?

For courses in the Time Schedule, Canvas course sites are generally available shortly after the official Time Schedule for the corresponding quarter is released. Courses are provisioned well in advance of the quarter so that instructors and administrators have ample time to configure courses before the start of the term.

Here are the approximate dates that your courses will be created in Canvas for future quarters. These dates are driven by the time schedule construction calendar of each of the three campuses.

2025-2026 Academic Year

  Autumn 2025 Winter 2026 Spring 2026 Summer 2026
UW Bothell April 11, 2025 October 10, 2025 January 16, 2026 January 30, 2026
UW Seattle March 26, 2025 July 21, 2025 November 3, 2025 December 17, 2025
UW Tacoma March 26, 2025 September 7, 2025 December 14, 2025 January 4, 2026

2026-2027 Academic Year (not final - subject to change)

  Autumn 2026 Winter 2027 Spring 2027 Summer 2027
UW Bothell April 10, 2026 October 9, 2027 January 22, 2027 February 5, 2027
UW Seattle March 25, 2026 July 20, 2026 November 2, 2026 December 23, 2026
UW Tacoma March 25, 2026 September 6, 2025 December 13, 2025 January 10, 2027

Canvas course creation logistics

Courses are automatically created in Canvas from the official time schedule as early as possible -- often before the time schedule is officially published (except for UW Bothell, see note below). When time schedule construction is closed to departments, and the switch is flipped (not a literal switch, but still a manual task for the Registrar's Office on each campus), the provisioning system begins querying for courses and creating them in the UW's Canvas.

This date is different for each campus and each quarter because the time schedule construction calendar varies by campus. Additionally, the course provisioning system only maintains three total quarters at a time: the current quarter plus two future quarters. It can take up to a few days to initially create the over 10,000 offerings for each quarter. 

Note: For UW Bothell, course creation starts when the time schedule is published. This change was made in January 2023 at the request of the UWB Registrar's Office.