How to track earnings season in SEC EDGAR, filing by filing

Three EDGAR tools that show the season

The first is the daily form index. Each business day EDGAR publishes a plain-text file, form.YYYYMMDD.idx, under sec.gov/Archives/edgar/daily-index/, listing every filing disseminated that day sorted by form type, with the company name, CIK number, filing date and file path. Counting the lines that start with “8-K” gives the day’s 8-K total. The index does not say which Items an 8-K reports, so on its own it cannot separate an earnings release from a director change or a debt offering.

The second is EDGAR full-text search, at efts.sec.gov. A query for the phrase “Item 2.02” with the form filter set to 8-K and a one-day date range returns matching documents, and each result carries an “items” field taken from the filing itself. Keeping only results whose items include 2.02, and counting each accession number once, gives a daily count of earnings-type 8-Ks.

The third is the submissions file each company has at data.sec.gov (data.sec.gov/submissions/CIK##########.json). Its list of recent filings has the form type, filing date, accession number and the same items field for every filing, so for a defined list of companies it shows exactly who has filed an Item 2.02 8-K and when. What each filing contains is a separate question, covered in our explainer at /articles/how-to-read-an-earnings-release-and-its-8-k.

Measuring the first three weeks of October 2026

We downloaded the 12 daily form indexes EDGAR had posted for the fourth quarter of 2026, covering 1 to 19 October; there is no file for Monday 12 October, a US federal holiday, and the file for 20 October had not been posted when we fetched on 21 October. We counted 8-K lines (8-K/A amendments excluded) in each. We then ran two full-text searches per day, for “Item 2.02” and for the item title “Results of Operations and Financial Condition”, merged the results and kept filings whose items field includes 2.02.

The two searches overlapped heavily: on 15 October the first returned 37 filings and the second 34, and the merged set with Item 2.02 was 37. As a check on coverage, every Item 2.02 8-K we found in the company submissions files below for 1 to 19 October also appeared in the search results.

The weekly pattern is clear. The first two days of the month brought 20 Item 2.02 filings, the week of 5 October 74, the four-day week of 13 October 102, and Monday 19 October alone 30. Across the 12 days, 226 of 2,380 8-Ks listed Item 2.02, which is 9.5% (226 ÷ 2,380 = 0.095, our arithmetic). Most 8-Ks in any week are about something other than results.

Banks first, then the largest companies

To see where large companies stand, we took a defined list: the first 50 entries in the SEC’s company_tickers.json file, the order our /earnings page also uses to put larger companies first. This is our list, not an index. Nine of the 50 do not file 8-Ks: eight foreign issuers whose recent filings are on Form 6-K and related forms (Royal Bank of Canada among them), and an American depositary receipt line for Contemporary Amperex Technology whose only filings are Forms F-6EF. That leaves 41 US filers. We checked each one’s submissions file for an Item 2.02 8-K filed from 1 October to 20 October 2026, and added Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, which sit outside the first 50, to complete a group of six large US banks.

The banks went first. JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs all filed third-quarter results on Tuesday 13 October, the first filing day after the holiday, and Bank of America and Morgan Stanley followed on 14 October. Johnson & Johnson and UnitedHealth also reported on 13 October, GE Aerospace and Netflix on 20 October. Of the 41 US filers on our list, seven had furnished a third-quarter results release by 20 October. The filing indexes show five of the six bank releases accepted before 08:00, JPMorgan’s at 06:30:38 for example, and Citigroup’s at 10:09:22, while Netflix’s was accepted at 16:01:55, just after the US cash session closed.

Not every Item 2.02 is a results release

Item 2.02 covers any public announcement of material non-public information about a completed period, so a count of Item 2.02 filings is a count of such announcements, not of finished quarterly reports. Two filings on our list show the difference. Tesla’s 8-K of 2 October furnishes its third-quarter production and delivery figures and says the financial results come after the close on 21 October. AbbVie’s 8-K of 5 October gives a preliminary figure for one expense line in the quarter ended 30 September, and states that the quarter’s results have not been finalised. Both are Item 2.02 filings; neither is the earnings release. A count that needs only full results has to open the exhibit, which is why our table above says what each one contains.

The calendar also depends on each company’s fiscal year, which the submissions file states as fiscalYearEnd. Micron’s fiscal year ended on 3 September 2026; it furnished results on 30 September and filed its 10-K on 9 October. Costco’s year ended on 30 August, with an Item 2.02 8-K on 24 September and a 10-K on 7 October. Oracle’s quarter ended 31 August and its results 8-K came on 10 September. Nvidia’s last results 8-K, on 26 August, covered a quarter ended 26 July. Companies on these schedules report outside the October cluster, so a season count framed around 30 September leaves them out by design.

Quarter end, report date and the 10-Q deadline

The gap between the quarter end and the release is set by each company, within limits set for the full report. JPMorgan’s results came 13 days after the 30 September quarter end; GE Aerospace’s and Netflix’s 20 days after it. Johnson & Johnson uses a fiscal calendar, and its quarter ended on 27 September, 16 days before its 13 October release (our arithmetic in each case).

The Item 2.02 8-K is not the full quarterly report. The SEC’s Form 10-Q instructions require the 10-Q within 40 days of the quarter end for large accelerated and accelerated filers, and within 45 days for all other registrants. For a 30 September quarter end, 40 days is Monday 9 November 2026. Forty-five days is Saturday 14 November, and SEC Rule 0-3 lets a filing due on a Saturday, Sunday or holiday be made on the next business day, which is Monday 16 November.

Companies differ in how they use that window. GE Aerospace filed its 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 September on 20 October, the same day as its 8-K. JPMorgan’s second-quarter 10-Q, for the quarter ended 30 June, was filed on 6 August 2026, 37 days later. The daily index table shows the effect: 115 10-Qs from 1 to 19 October, against 2,380 8-Ks, because most 10-Qs for this quarter were not yet due.

Where the PYE earnings calendar fits

EDGAR records what has been filed. It does not say what is scheduled. Our calendar at /earnings covers the forward side: for this week, next week and the week after, it lists which companies are due to report, whether before the US open or after the close, and the fiscal period each report covers. The dates come from the Alpha Vantage earnings calendar and are shown with that source and the time of the last update; companies are ordered as in the SEC company list, larger first. The calendar shows dates and timing only. A date is a company’s announced plan and can change; the Item 2.02 8-K is the record that it happened. Each company’s ticker page on our site also lists its recent SEC filings, with Item 2.02 8-Ks labelled as earnings releases.

How to check these numbers yourself

Every figure here can be rebuilt from public EDGAR files with the method above. The SEC asks automated users to declare a User-Agent with contact details and to stay under 10 requests a second; a browser works for small checks.

• Daily counts: open sec.gov/Archives/edgar/daily-index/2026/QTR4/, pick form.20261013.idx, and count the lines that begin with 8-K or 10-Q; the index does not show Item 2.02 or any other Item.
• Item 2.02 counts: run EDGAR full-text search with the phrase “Item 2.02”, form 8-K and a one-day date range, then keep results whose items include 2.02.
• A single company: open data.sec.gov/submissions/CIK0000019617.json (JPMorgan Chase) and read the form, filingDate and items lists in filings.recent.
• Deadlines: the General Instructions on page 1 of Form 10-Q at sec.gov/files/form10-q.pdf, and 17 CFR 240.0-3 on eCFR.