IGCSE Chemistry Paper 2 Revision Plan: Your 28 Days to 12 November

By Hosni — Biology and Chemistry teacher with 20 years of teaching experience

Checked against Cambridge's final November 2026 timetables for Zones 3 and 4, and version 2 of the 0620 syllabus published August 2026.

TL;DR: Cambridge sits IGCSE Chemistry Paper 2 on Thursday 12 November 2026, which is 28 days after your Paper 6 on 15 October. That is the longest gap between components of any Cambridge IGCSE science this series, and Paper 2 is the final IGCSE paper of the whole November session. The paper carries 30% of your qualification across 40 questions in 45 minutes, and 63% of its marks test straight recall. Those four weeks decide a large part of your grade, and most students spend them doing nothing.

Contents

• When is IGCSE Chemistry Paper 2 in November 2026?
• Why the gap is longer in Chemistry than any other science
• What Paper 2 tests, and why it favours recall
• The 28-day plan, week by week
• Where students lose multiple-choice marks
• How to get through 40 questions in 45 minutes
• If you are retaking Chemistry this November
• Frequently asked questions

When is IGCSE Chemistry Paper 2 in November 2026?

Cambridge sits IGCSE Chemistry 0620 Paper 2 on Thursday 12 November 2026, in both administrative Zone 3 and Zone 4. The dates are identical in the two zones; only the session differs, with Zone 3 sitting in the morning and Zone 4 in the afternoon.

That matters more than it sounds, because there is a lot of confusion around which zone the Gulf sits in. Depending on which website you read, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE are placed in Zone 3 or in Zone 4, and centres in the same city can differ. For Chemistry you can stop worrying about it. Cambridge's final November 2026 timetable for Zone 3 and its equivalent timetable for Zone 4 put every 0620 component on exactly the same day. Confirm the session time with your exams officer, and treat the dates as settled.

Here is the full picture for an Extended candidate.

Core candidates follow the same shape with Paper 3 on 12 October and Paper 1 on 12 November. If you are on the 9–1 route, syllabus 0971, your dates are the same again.

Why the gap is longer in Chemistry than any other science

Twenty-eight days separate your last written Chemistry paper on 15 October from Paper 2 on 12 November. That is four clear weeks, and it is the longest gap of any Cambridge IGCSE science in this series.

Compare the sciences and the pattern is obvious. Physics candidates finish their practical or alternative on 20 October and sit their multiple choice on 5 November, a gap of 16 days. Co-ordinated Sciences follows the same 16-day pattern. Biology finishes its theory paper on 16 October and sits multiple choice on 10 November, which is 25 days. Chemistry sits at 28 days, twelve days longer than Physics.

There is a second detail worth knowing if you are sitting both Chemistry and Biology. The order is reversed between the two subjects. Chemistry runs theory first on 12 October and the practical component second on 15 October. Biology runs the practical component first on 13 October and theory second on 16 October. Students who plan Biology and Chemistry as though the pattern is identical get caught out in the second week of October.

And then there is the thing nobody mentions. Paper 2 on 12 November is the last Cambridge IGCSE paper of the entire November 2026 series. Nothing else follows it. Your school will have emptied out, your friends will have finished, and you will still have a paper worth 30% of your Chemistry grade sitting ahead of you.

Taking a break after a long exam session is normal, and I would not want a student to do anything else. What I see year after year is that the break stretches, and then it stretches further, and by the first week of November the student has lost the shape of a syllabus they knew perfectly well in October. I have watched students fall behind severely on Paper 2 for exactly this reason, and it hurts most in Chemistry, because Chemistry Paper 2 is a hard paper.

Biology has the same gap problem with a different cause. Biology Paper 2 questions tend to be straightforward, which sounds like good news until you realise everyone else finds them straightforward too. The competition to score above 36 out of 40 is fierce, and a single careless answer costs you more than it would in Chemistry. Either way the instruction is the same: take a short break, then start practising. Minimise the break so you are not relearning material you had already mastered.

What Paper 2 tests, and why it favours recall

Paper 2 is 40 compulsory four-option multiple-choice items in 45 minutes, worth 40 marks and 30% of your qualification, and it can draw on any part of the syllabus. There is no choice of question and no partial credit.

Two things follow from that, and both should shape how you use the four weeks.

The first is the balance of skills. The 0620 syllabus for 2026 to 2028 sets the assessment objectives inside Papers 1 and 2 at 63% knowledge with understanding and 37% handling information and problem-solving. Nearly two-thirds of the paper is recall. Across the qualification as a whole, recall accounts for only 50%, so Paper 2 is the most memory-dependent paper you will sit in Chemistry. Recall is also the first thing to decay when you stop revising, which is precisely why a four-week gap is dangerous rather than restful.

The second is coverage. For Extended candidates the questions are set on the Core and the Supplement together, across all twelve topic areas, from states of matter through to experimental techniques and chemical analysis. Paper 4 samples the syllabus; Paper 2 can reach anywhere in it. Whatever you were lucky enough to avoid on 12 October is still live on 12 November.

One point of housekeeping. Cambridge published version 2 of the 0620 syllabus in August 2026, and the change note records that the Assessment Overview on page 9 was updated. There are no substantial changes affecting teaching, and textbooks endorsed for the syllabus from 2023 remain suitable, but if you are working from a printed copy dated 2023 it is worth downloading the current version.

The 28-day plan, week by week

Rest for two or three days, audit against the syllabus in week one, rebuild recall in week two, sweep the full syllabus in week three, and sit timed papers in week four. The dates below assume the Zone 3 and Zone 4 timetable, so they apply to you whichever zone your centre falls in.

Week 1 — 15 to 21 October: recover, then audit

Sit Paper 6 on the Thursday and stop. Take Friday, Saturday and Sunday off properly. You have just finished two demanding papers and a tired brain retains nothing.

Then, from Monday 19 October, do one thing only: find out what you have forgotten. Work through a syllabus checklist rather than a textbook, marking each learning objective as secure, shaky or gone. Our interactive 0620 revision checklist lists every objective from all twelve topics and shows you which content is Core and which is Extended-only Supplement, which saves you revising Supplement material you were never entered for.

Do not revise anything this week. Just build the list. If you want a single condensed reference to check yourself against rather than a full textbook, our IGCSE Biology and Chemistry notes eBook is designed for exactly this kind of rapid self-audit.

Week 2 — 22 to 28 October: rebuild the recall spine

This is the week you attack the "gone" column. Because Paper 2 is 63% recall, the highest-value work now is definitions, formulae, colour changes, tests for ions and gases, the reactivity series and the solubility rules. These are the items that decay fastest and the items that four-option questions test most directly.

Work in short daily sessions rather than long ones. Twenty minutes of self-testing on the qualitative analysis tables beats two hours of rereading them. If your Chemistry has been shaky across the whole course rather than in patches, structured teaching through the full syllabus will serve you better than solo revision, and our IGCSE Chemistry course covers all twelve topics with this exam in mind.

Week 3 — 29 October to 4 November: sweep the whole syllabus

Now switch from recall to questions. Work topic by topic through past multiple-choice papers, not full papers yet, so that you can see which topics still let you down. Our classified solved past papers group Paper 2 questions by topic across many sessions, which is the fastest way to expose a weak area rather than a weak day.

Keep a log of every question you get wrong. Write down not the correct answer but the reason you chose the wrong one. That log becomes your revision material for week four.

Week 4 — 5 to 12 November: timed papers only

From Thursday 5 November, stop learning new material. Sit complete papers against a 45-minute clock, at the same time of day as your session, and mark them immediately.

Aim for three or four full timed papers across this week with a day between each for review. Our solved past papers bundle gives you worked reasoning for every option rather than a bare answer key, which is what you need when you are trying to work out why a distractor caught you.

On the final two days, read nothing new. Reread your wrong-answer log and your qualitative analysis tables, and sleep properly.

Where students lose multiple-choice marks

Most Paper 2 marks are lost to distractor design rather than to gaps in knowledge. A student who could explain a concept in writing will still pick the wrong option when three of the four look plausible.

This is the hardest thing to convey to a student who has just done well on Paper 4. Extended writing gives you partial credit; a structured question rewards the working even when the final number is wrong. Paper 2 gives you nothing for a nearly-right route. The boundary evidence bears this out, and our analysis of IGCSE Chemistry grade boundaries shows how tight the Paper 2 A boundary has been across recent sessions.

How to get through 40 questions in 45 minutes

Forty questions in 45 minutes gives you roughly 67 seconds per question, including reading time and transferring answers. That is the number to rehearse against, and it is why timed practice in week four matters more than any amount of note-making.

The arithmetic is unforgiving in one specific way. If you spend four minutes on a hard stoichiometry question, you have borrowed that time from three other questions you would have answered correctly. The cost of getting stuck is never one mark.

If you are retaking Chemistry this November

Cambridge allows candidates to retake the whole qualification as many times as they want, and private candidates can enter for 0620. What you cannot do is retake a single paper in isolation and keep your marks from the others, so a November entry means sitting all three components again.

That reframes the four-week gap for a retaker. You are not maintaining knowledge from a paper you sat in October; you are building it from a session that finished in June or August. Start the plan above at week two rather than week one, and give the recall spine two full weeks instead of one.

If you are weighing up whether the retake is worth entering at all, or you want a second opinion on where your marks went, message me on WhatsApp at +965 5137 5709 or email admin@chem-bio.info and I will look at it with you.

Frequently asked questions

When is IGCSE Chemistry Paper 2 in November 2026? Thursday 12 November 2026, in both Zone 3 and Zone 4, with Zone 3 sitting in the morning and Zone 4 in the afternoon. It is the last Cambridge IGCSE paper of the November 2026 series.

How much is IGCSE Chemistry Paper 2 worth? Paper 2 carries 30% of your total qualification, with 40 marks available across 40 four-option questions in 45 minutes. Paper 4 carries 50% and your practical component carries the remaining 20%.

Does Paper 2 cover the whole syllabus? Yes. For Extended candidates the questions are set on the Core and Supplement content together across all twelve topic areas, so anything absent from Paper 4 can still appear on Paper 2.

Can I retake just one IGCSE Chemistry paper? No. Cambridge allows unlimited retakes of the whole qualification, but you cannot re-sit a single component and carry forward your marks from the others.