Weekend and Evening Driving Tests in 2026: What They Cost and How to Book One

Not everybody can take a Tuesday morning off work. If your job, college timetable or childcare makes a weekday test awkward, the good news is that the DVSA does offer practical tests outside standard weekday hours — evenings, Saturdays, and in some cases bank holidays. The less good news is that they cost more, there are fewer of them, and they are not available at every test centre.

Here is how weekend and evening driving tests work in 2026: what they cost, where you can get one, how to book, and whether they are actually worth the premium.

What Counts as an Evening or Weekend Test?

The DVSA splits practical test slots into two fee bands:

• Weekday tests — Monday to Friday during standard daytime hours.
• Evening, weekend and bank holiday tests — weekday slots that start later in the day, plus Saturdays, Sundays where offered, and bank holidays.

Evening availability is seasonal in practice. Because the practical test requires adequate daylight for the eyesight check and safe driving assessment, later slots are far more common in the lighter months than in December and January.

What Does a Weekend or Evening Test Cost in 2026?

The fees are set nationally by the DVSA and are identical at every test centre in Great Britain:

• Car practical test, weekday: £62
• Car practical test, evening, weekend or bank holiday: £75
• Car theory test: £23 (this does not change by day)

So the premium is £13. It is worth being clear about that number, because a common scam involves third-party sites charging a “booking fee” on top and presenting it as the DVSA’s price. Book through the official GOV.UK service and you pay the DVSA fee and nothing else.

For a wider picture of what the whole process costs, see our guide to the cost of learning to drive in the UK in 2026.

How to Book a Weekend or Evening Test

1. Go to the official DVSA booking service on GOV.UK. Not a third-party site. You will need your provisional driving licence number, your theory test pass certificate number, and a payment card.
2. Choose your test centre. The service will show available dates and times. Weekend slots, where the centre offers them, appear alongside weekday ones.
3. Check the price shown before you confirm. If the slot is an evening, weekend or bank holiday one, the £75 fee will be displayed.
4. If nothing is available, keep checking. Cancellations are released continuously, and weekend slots that free up tend to get taken quickly.

If you already hold a booking and want to move it to a weekend slot, you can change it through the same service — but note that the DVSA limits how many times you can change a test, and moving from a weekday to a weekend slot means paying the difference. Our guide to DVSA booking rules in 2026 covers the change limits in detail.

Which Test Centres Offer Them?

There is no permanent national list, because availability depends on examiner staffing at each site. In broad terms:

• Larger urban centres are more likely to run Saturday tests, simply because they have more examiners.
• Small rural and island centres often do not, because a single examiner covers the site.
• Availability increases when the DVSA runs overtime initiatives to reduce backlogs, which has been a recurring feature of recent years.

The only reliable way to find out is to search your chosen centre on the booking service and look at what appears.

Is a Weekend Test Easier?

This is the question everybody actually wants answered, and the honest response is: it is different, not easier.

Arguments that weekends help:

• No school run, so residential areas around test centres are calmer.
• Less commuter traffic on main roads and dual carriageways.
• Fewer buses and delivery vehicles on many town-centre routes.

Arguments that weekends do not help:

• Retail traffic. Saturday shopping traffic around supermarkets, retail parks and town centres can be worse than a Tuesday.
• Different road users. More cyclists, more pedestrians, more unfamiliar drivers, more people towing.
• Parked cars. Residential streets are fuller at weekends because people are home, which makes manoeuvres and meeting traffic harder.
• Evening light. A late slot in autumn can mean driving into low sun or fading light.

The DVSA does not publish a national breakdown that shows weekend tests are systematically easier to pass. The sensible conclusion is to book the slot that fits your life and your energy levels, then practise at that time of day. A learner who has only ever driven at 10am on a Wednesday will find a 4pm Saturday genuinely unfamiliar.

Practical Advice Before You Book

1. Match your practice to your slot. If you book a Saturday afternoon, do at least three lessons on Saturday afternoons.
2. Check your instructor’s availability first. If you are using their car, they need to be free — and weekend hours are in high demand.
3. Budget the extra £13. Small in isolation, but it adds up if you need a retest.
4. Think about light. In late autumn and winter, an evening slot may mean driving in near-darkness. That is legitimate test conditions, but it needs practice.
5. Do not book a weekend slot purely to get a date sooner. Being ready matters far more than being early. Our guide on finding an earlier cancellation explains the legitimate ways to move a date forward.

How the Exam Routes App Can Help

Whatever slot you book, the routes stay the same. The Exam Routes App gives you real driving test routes for centres across the UK with turn-by-turn navigation, so you can drive the roads your examiner will use — at the time of day you will actually be tested. Practising a Saturday-afternoon route on a Saturday afternoon removes the one variable you can control for free.

Frequently Asked Questions