Which curriculum does each subject use in 2026/27? A subject-by-subject guide

It is the question in every staffroom conversation about this year, and it deserves a straight answer: when you sit down to write or revisit your plans, which curriculum are you actually planning from?

It depends on the subject, and for one or two subjects, it depends on your school. 2026/27 is the first year of phased enactment of the redeveloped curriculum (new to the rollout? Start with our guide to what Primary Curriculum 2026 changes and what it doesn’t), so 2026/27 is the year your planning folder spans three different generations of curriculum documents at once. In practice it is manageable once you can see it laid out. Here is the whole picture.

The short answer

Subject	Plan from
English	Primary Language Curriculum (the 2025 edition updates the 2019 one; same curriculum)
Gaeilge	Primary Language Curriculum (the 2025 edition updates the 2019 one; same curriculum)
Mathematics	Primary Mathematics Curriculum (2023)
Your school’s chosen enactment area(s)	The new 2025 specification for that area
Everything else	Primary School Curriculum (1999)

The table above is the quick answer. The detail follows.

What “enactment area” means

The redeveloped curriculum organises subjects into five curriculum areas, each with a specification approved in September 2025 (Circular 0067/2025):

• Language (English, Gaeilge, and Modern Foreign Languages from 3rd Class)
• STEM (Mathematics plus Science, Technology and Engineering)
• Wellbeing (incorporating PE and SPHE)
• Social and Environmental Education (History and Geography)
• Arts Education (Visual Arts, Music, Drama, with Dance across the arts)

From September 2026, each school begins enacting at least one of these areas. The choice is school-led. Your school decides which area it starts with, based on its own context. 2026/27 includes four support closure days, three supported by Oide and one school-led, with the school-led day for staff to plan that enactment together.

So the first thing to find out, if you have not already, is which area your school has chosen. That is the one subject group where your planning moves to Learning Outcomes from the new specification. A school starting with Wellbeing plans PE and SPHE from the Wellbeing specification, while its History and Geography planning stays on the 1999 curriculum for another year.

English and Gaeilge: carry on

Language planning stays on the Primary Language Curriculum, in enactment since 2019, and the Department has confirmed that Oide support for its ongoing enactment continues alongside the new rollout (Circular 0052/2026). The redeveloped Language specification approved in September 2025 keeps the same name and the same English and Gaeilge structure: it is the updated edition of the curriculum you already plan from, with Modern Foreign Languages added for 3rd Class up. You are already planning with its Learning Outcomes, and that carries straight over; MFL only becomes a planning job when your school takes on the Language area in its chosen sequence.

Maths: no change

The Primary Mathematics Curriculum (2023) remains your maths document. As with language, you are already in the Learning Outcomes world for maths.

The 1999 curriculum is still doing real work

This surprises people, but for most subjects outside language, maths and your chosen enactment area, the 1999 Primary School Curriculum, with its strands, strand units and content objectives, is still the document your plans should reference in 2026/27. It is not a mistake and it is not a stopgap you should feel behind about. The phased rollout is designed this way so that no teacher is asked to relearn every subject at once.

What this means for your long-term plans

Practically, writing your long-term plans for 2026/27 means three different kinds of curriculum content sitting side by side:

• Learning Outcomes for English, Gaeilge, Maths and your enactment area
• Content objectives under strands and strand units for the 1999 subjects
• Whole-school decisions flowing down into both, since the updated 2026 preparation guidance expects your long-term plan to reflect your school’s curriculum plans

Your plans do not need to explain any of this context. They need to reference the right document for each subject, and stay concise. One subject on the wrong curriculum version is the kind of thing that quietly undermines an otherwise excellent folder, purely because it looks like the planning was copied forward from an old year.

A note for multigrade teachers

If you teach a multigrade class, the version question multiplies: the right curriculum for each subject, across each class level in the room, in one plan. The two-year cycle structure of the curriculum areas helps here, and it is worth building your long-term plan around the subjects and levels together rather than writing separate parallel plans and stapling them.

Let the tool carry the version question

This is exactly the problem Pleanáil was built for. When you add a subject to a plan, Pleanáil resolves the correct curriculum version for that subject and class level automatically: Language Curriculum outcomes for English and Gaeilge, the 2023 curriculum for Maths, the new specifications for the redeveloped areas, and 1999 strands and objectives everywhere they still apply. You choose what to teach; the right curriculum content is simply there, current, and cited correctly in the printed plan.

That means the question this post answers is one you only ever have to think about once. From there, your planning time is spent deciding what your class will learn.

Start your plans with the right curriculum already in place. Create your first plan free.