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We Checked 1,246 Live Dental CE Courses. Most of Them Want Your Friday.

We Checked 1,246 Live Dental CE Courses. Most of Them Want Your Friday.

11/10/2026 9:46:00 AM   |   Comments: 0   |   Views: 5
The short version: We sorted every dated, in-person dental CE course on CE Crowd by the day of the week it runs: 1,246 courses from 149 providers. Friday is the CE day. 38% of courses start on a Friday, and only 22% avoid every weekday. If your office is closed on Fridays, 58% of live courses and 80% of hands-on courses cost you no clinic day at all. If you work a five-day week, plan on giving up a day for most of your live hours.

The Day of the Week Is a Line Item

In our last post on this channel, we priced 382 CE courses and found that the typical hourly cost was $39. The bigger number in that piece was the clinic day. An average general dentist nets roughly $1,100 per day in the chair, based on the ADA Health Policy Institute's 2025 net income figure, so a $350 weekday lecture really costs about $1,450.

That makes the calendar a cost question. Two courses with the same fee and credits can differ by a full day of production depending on which day they fall on. Providers don't publish their schedules in a way you can compare, so we pulled the start and end dates of every live, in-person course listed on cecrowd.com for 2026 and 2027. After removing duplicate listings, we counted the days each one occupies.

When Live Dental CE Actually Runs

Here is the share of courses starting on each day of the week. Multi-day courses are counted once, on their first day.
Start dayLive in-person coursesShareLive webinars (share)
Monday665%8%
Tuesday524%17%
Wednesday13811%23%
Thursday22418%16%
Friday47138%27%
Saturday27322%8%
Sunday222%1%
Total1,246871 webinars
Courses dated January 2026 through December 2027, 1,107 in the U.S. and 139 in Canada. The 345 courses still ahead of us as of this week lean even harder on Friday: 43% start that day.

Friday leads by a wide margin, and the pattern holds when we exclude the five largest providers (38% of the remaining courses still start on Fridays). Monday and Tuesday together account for under 10%. Sunday barely exists. Webinars are spread more evenly across the week, but Friday leads there too, and only 8% run on Saturdays.

Multi-day courses tell the same story. A third of all live courses run two days or more, and 82% of those include a Saturday. The most common shapes are Friday to Saturday (122 courses), Thursday to Saturday (79 courses), and Saturday to Sunday (61 courses). Providers build around the weekend and borrow one or two weekdays on the front end.

What That Costs You Depends on the Days You Work

The same calendar lands very differently on different practices. We counted, for each course, how many of a practice's working days it overlaps.
Your clinic daysCourses that cost no clinic dayCost one dayCost two or more
Monday to Thursday58%34%8%
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday30%53%17%
Tuesday to Friday26%58%16%
Monday to Friday22%61%17%


A Monday-to-Thursday office is the schedule the CE market is built for. More than half of all live courses fit into a Friday and a weekend, and the hands-on numbers are even better: of the 87 hands-on courses in the data, 80% fall entirely on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Only 34% are weekend-only, so a five-day practice gives up a day for two out of three of them.

Taking Monday or Wednesday off instead of Friday helps far less than you might expect, because so few courses run on those days. If you are deciding which day to close and CE matters to you, Friday is the one that pays.

Who Runs Courses on Your Days Off

The provider type predicts the schedule better than the topic does.

Dental schools: the most Saturdays

Across 605 courses from 45 dental school CE programs, 42% start on Fridays and 30% on Saturdays. Schools have the highest share of weekend-only courses in the data, 28%, which makes sense: their clinics and labs sit empty on Saturdays. If you work Monday to Friday and want live hours without closing, a school's Saturday calendar is the first place to look.

Dental societies: weekday evenings

Societies and study clubs schedule differently. Of 392 society courses, only 17% start on a Saturday, while Wednesday and Thursday together account for 39%. The reason is the dinner meeting: 14% of society courses start between 5 and 7 p.m., almost all of them Monday through Thursday. A 6 p.m. lecture after a full schedule costs you a tired evening, not a clinic day, and it usually comes at society pricing.

Institutes and course companies: Thursday through Saturday

The remaining 249 courses come from 33 providers, mostly private institutes and manufacturers such as The Dawson Academy, Spear Education, The Pankey Institute and Dentsply Sirona. They start 41% of their courses on Fridays and 31% on Thursdays. Their multi-day programs typically run Thursday to Saturday, so 57% of these courses include a Saturday but only 12% are weekend-only. Budget one or two clinic days for each of these programs, plus travel.

How to Plan a Year of CE Around Your Schedule

  1. Block your CE days in the schedule first. Mark the Fridays you will give to CE before the hygiene and restorative schedules fill. A course you find in March is easy to attend if the day was already held open.
  2. Put hands-on courses on Friday and Saturday. That is where 80% of them already sit. If you work Fridays, plan to close one per hands-on course, and count it in the course's price.
  3. Fill required topics on evenings and weekends. CPR, infection control, and jurisprudence are offered often enough to wait for a society dinner meeting, a school Saturday, or a live webinar.
  4. Check the end date, not only the start. A course listed as "Friday" may run Thursday to Saturday. Thursday is the expensive day.
  5. Look at your own state's calendar. Local schedules vary. In our data, Alabama courses almost never run on Saturday, while about four in ten Oregon and Virginia courses do.

Checklist Before You Register

  • How many of my clinic days does this course overlap, from start date to end date?
  • If it overlaps one, have I added about $1,100 (or my own daily net) to the fee?
  • Is the same topic offered on a Saturday, a weekday evening, or as a live webinar?
  • Does my board count a live webinar as live credit if I take that route?
  • Is the day already blocked in the schedule, or will patients need to be moved?

Find Courses That Fit Your Week

CE Crowd lists dated live courses by state and format, so you can see the actual days before you commit. Start with in-person courses or your state, for example California, and check the dates against your schedule. For required hours that don't need a room, check the live webinar listings. To hear about new Friday and Saturday courses before they fill, sign up for CE Crowd course alerts.

References

  1. CE Crowd. Analysis of 1,246 dated in-person dental CE course listings on cecrowd.com (149 providers; January 2026 to December 2027; duplicates removed) and 871 live virtual courses. November 2026.
  2. American Dental Association Health Policy Institute. Dental practice research: Survey of Dental Practice, average net income of private practice dentists, 2025. ada.org
  3. CE Crowd on Dentaltown. We Priced 382 Dental CE Courses. Here's What a CE Hour Really Costs. October 2026. dentaltown.com
Category: Financial Planning and Investments, Practice Management, HR and Accounting
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