The Chicagoland Deadline Calendar

There are two kinds of deadlines around Chicago.

The easy ones have dates. The winter parking ban starts December 1. GoCPS opens in September. Your city sticker expires at the end of a month you can identify by looking at the sticker.

Then there are property taxes.

Cook County can tell you that you have about a month to appeal your assessment. It cannot necessarily tell you when that month will be. As of August 17, 18 of Cook County’s 38 townships were still blank on the Assessor’s calendar, with no appeal date posted at all. DuPage had published appeal deadlines for zero of its nine townships.

This is normal.

So this page is less a calendar than a list of clocks: what starts them, how long you get, what happens if you miss them, and where to check the date before trusting it.

The most important one starts when a reassessment notice arrives in the mail.

Last verified: August 24, 2026 (Cook County's appeal windows and the second-installment bill re-checked that day; other counties carry the check dates noted in their sections). Dates on this page come from the government agencies responsible for them. Because several are published on rotating schedules, use the official link beside any deadline to confirm it before relying on it.

On this page: Your property tax appeal · The second appeal · Property tax exemptions · Missed exemptions · Collar county appeals · City stickers · Winter parking · GoCPS · Second-installment taxes · FAQ

Your property tax appeal starts with the mail

If you own a home in Cook County, this is the deadline worth understanding even when you have no idea when it is.

Cook County reassesses property on a three-year rotation. Chicago, the north suburbs, and the south and west suburbs take turns. In 2026, the south and west suburbs are up.

Within that group, townships open one at a time.

The Assessor mails your reassessment notice. Your appeal period begins around then, and the exact last day to appeal is printed on the notice. The Assessor describes the window as typically about 30 days, although some published 2026 windows have been closer to six weeks.

So don't count 30 days yourself if the notice gives you a date. Use the date on the notice.

There is another wrinkle here: your township is not necessarily the name of your town. Cook County has its own township geography, including names like West Chicago, Hyde Park and Lake View. If you do not know yours, use the Assessor's address search.

Filing an appeal with the Assessor is free. The office says it can take as little as 20 minutes online, and you do not need an attorney.

That does not mean an appeal will lower your assessment. It means you can find out without first paying somebody to ask.

The appeal can matter. Property taxes are a large enough part of the cost of owning a home here that we have a separate guide to how Cook County property tax bills work and another comparing property taxes across Chicago suburbs.

What is open right now?

As of August 24, Cook County had published current Assessor deadlines for several townships, including:

Confirm your deadline on the Cook County Assessor's assessment calendar before filing.

Eighteen townships still had no published date as of the August 17 count, and Wheeling, Palatine and Schaumburg were still blank on August 24. West Chicago's window closed August 21. Lemont was blank until mid-August, when it went from a blank line to a live September 29 deadline — which is how these windows tend to arrive.

If yours is blank, there is no secret calendar elsewhere that you need to uncover. Watch the Assessor's calendar and your mail.

The notice is the useful reminder.

Missed the first appeal? There is another one

Cook County has two separate local property-assessment appeals.

First comes the Assessor.

Later comes the Cook County Board of Review.

The Board of Review is not an extension of the Assessor appeal. It has its own filing window, and you can file there even if you never appealed to the Assessor.

This matters if your Assessor deadline has already passed.

As of August 17, the Board had opened its first 2026 group: Evanston, New Trier, Norwood Park, Oak Park, River Forest, Riverside and Rogers Park. Filing for that group closes September 1, with evidence due September 11.

Confirm the current group on the Board of Review's dates and deadlines page. The schedule grows as more townships move through the process.

The Board's most recent annual report gives us one useful number. In tax year 2023, nearly 62% of homeowners who handled their own residential appeals received some reduction in value.

That is roughly three out of five.

It is also a 2023 result, not a promise about your house.

Board of Review appeals are free. If you disagree with the Board's decision, there is another level, the Illinois Property Tax Appeal Board, or PTAB. That appeal generally has to be filed within 30 days of the Board's decision.

You can spend an impressive amount of time appealing one number in Illinois without paying a filing fee.

The exemptions you have to file again

Cook County's property tax exemptions have one particularly annoying feature: some renew themselves and some don't.

Here is the version worth saving:

The big one for many families is the Senior Freeze.

A regular Senior Citizen Exemption renews automatically once it is in place. The Senior Freeze does not. It has to be filed every year.

The freeze limits increases in the home's equalized assessed value. It does not freeze the final property-tax bill, because tax rates can still change.

Income limits also depend on the tax year. The state's 2026 form uses a household-income limit of $75,000 based on 2025 income. That is different from older Cook County material using the previous limit for the previous tax year, so check the current application rather than carrying last year's number forward.

Cook County's regular exemption application deadline is May 15. Applications received later move through the Certificate of Error process.

If you have a parent who qualifies for the Senior Freeze, this is one of the rare situations in which asking, “Did you do the property tax form?” may be a genuinely useful contribution to family life.

You can recover some missed exemptions

Missing an exemption does not necessarily mean the money is gone.

Cook County has a Certificate of Error process for exemptions that should have appeared on an already-paid tax bill.

The Assessor currently says claims can reach back about four tax years. Its pages disagree on whether tax year 2025 is already included in that range, so use the current Certificate of Error page for the years available when you apply.

This can be worth checking for someone who:

• bought a home and never received the Homeowner Exemption
• turned 65 and missed the Senior Citizen Exemption
• qualified for another exemption but never filed
• has been helping an older parent with bills and has no idea what exemptions are on the property

The Assessor estimates 8–10 weeks to process the application, followed by another 3–4 weeks for the Treasurer to send a refund.

Call it roughly three months.

For comparison, the Assessor says the Homeowner Exemption saves about $950 a year on average. Several missed years can therefore become real money fairly quickly.

This is worth checking before paying someone to investigate it for you.

Outside Cook County, watch for publication

Property assessment appeals in the collar counties have the same basic problem: the deadline often cannot exist until the assessment is published.

Under Illinois law, the filing window generally runs for 30 calendar days after publication of the assessment list.

That gives you a much better rule than trying to memorize an annual date.

DuPage County

As of August 17, DuPage had published no filing deadline for any of its nine townships.

Wayne, Bloomingdale, Addison, Winfield, Milton, York, Naperville, Lisle and Downers Grove were all blank on the county's assessment-status page.

If you own property there, watch the DuPage assessment status page. Once your township publishes, the appeal period runs 30 days.

There is nothing useful I can turn the blank boxes into for you. They remain blank boxes.

Kane County

Kane publishes township deadlines as assessments are completed.

As of August 17, seven of its 16 townships had dates. Five of those seven deadlines had already passed or were expiring that same day, leaving Sugar Grove (August 24) and Batavia (August 31) still open. Nine remained pending.

Watch the Kane County filing deadlines page. If you file by mail, Kane counts the postmark date.

Will County

Will County has published its current deadline: September 14, 2026.

Confirm it against the county's current Board of Review rules before filing. The county's general complaint webpage was still showing its 2025 window when this article was checked, while the 2026 county rules contained the new date.

Yes, the official website can send you to last year's deadline while the official PDF gives you this year's deadline. This is why we're checking things.

Lake County

Lake County also uses the 30-days-after-publication system, and the deadline appears on the assessment notice.

We could not verify a current township schedule from the county's site on August 15. So I am not going to borrow one from somebody selling tax appeals and put it here with a confident face.

Use the date on your notice and confirm it with Lake County.

Your city sticker has two grace periods

Chicago city stickers expire on the last day of their expiration month.

Then things become unnecessarily interesting.

The City Clerk gives you 30 days after expiration to buy the sticker without a late fee.

But the grace period before you can receive a ticket is only 15 days.

Starting on day 16, an expired sticker can get you a ticket even though you are still inside the 30-day period for avoiding the late fee.

The minimum ticket is $200. Once you pass the 30-day purchasing grace period, the sticker also carries a $60 late fee, or $30 for a senior-discounted sticker.

The Clerk's page says tickets can be issued every day until the vehicle is in compliance.

So the twentieth day after your sticker expires is not the relaxed middle of a grace period. You have been ticketable since day sixteen.

New Chicago residents and people who just bought a vehicle also get 30 days to purchase a sticker.

The Clerk still mails renewal reminders, but describes them as a courtesy and specifically says that not receiving one does not waive the late fee.

Your safest reminder is the expiration month on the sticker, not the possibility that Chicago will remember for you.

Confirm the current rules on the Chicago City Clerk's vehicle sticker page.

The winter parking ban

Chicago has two snow-related parking restrictions. They are easy to confuse and expensive enough that you shouldn't.

The overnight winter ban

From December 1 through April 1, parking is prohibited from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. on 107 miles of designated streets.

Snow does not need to exist.

The ban applies every night during those four months on streets with the permanent signs.

A violation means at least a $150 tow fee plus a $60 ticket and $25 per day for storage. That is $235 on day one.

The city says the restrictions trace back to problems during the major snowstorms of 1967 and 1979. Chicago has apparently decided that remembering 1967 every night for four months is easier than risking a sequel.

Check the city's winter snow parking restrictions before leaving a car on one of the affected streets.

Our Chicago weather-by-month guide can help with the less legally binding question of when winter becomes miserable.

The two-inch ban

This is separate.

Another 500 miles of main streets can be covered by a parking restriction after at least two inches of snow.

It can happen at any hour and on any date.

The city says this ban is not activated often. When it is, cars may be ticketed or relocated.

So:

December 1–April 1 + 3–7 a.m. + designated street: overnight winter ban.

Two inches of snow + designated street: separate snow ban.

Check the sign where you park. It has the advantage of being physically present when you need it.

GoCPS has a real deadline

Parents applying to Chicago public schools get something refreshingly recognizable: dates published in advance.

For the 2027–28 school year, GoCPS applications open September 9, 2026 at 10 a.m. and close November 13, 2026 at 5 p.m.

Confirm the current calendar on GoCPS before submitting.

Initial high school offers are scheduled for February 12, 2027. Elementary offers are scheduled for March 12.

There are separate fall testing dates for students applying to programs that require them, so families doing high-school applications should check those when the application window opens.

This is Chicago only.

There is no equivalent master application calendar for suburban school districts. Enrollment and application rules vary by district, so check the district serving your address.

The second-installment tax bill

Second-installment bills are normally due August 1. Cook County announced in June that the tax year 2025 bills would be delayed by roughly two months.

That delay is over. The county posted the bills online August 18, with paper copies mailing September 1 and payment due October 1.

Check the Cook County Treasurer for your specific bill and account details before paying.

This is also a useful example of why a static list of Chicagoland deadlines doesn't work particularly well. The largest bill on this page was already past its normal due date before it had a new one.

One deadline for a much worse situation

If you have unpaid Cook County property taxes from a prior year, do not treat them like an ordinary late bill.

Cook County eventually sells delinquent taxes through its Annual Tax Sale. The Treasurer had anticipated the next sale for December 2026 when this page was researched, after a state-law change delayed it.

That timing needs to be confirmed directly with the Treasurer before relying on it.

For a residential property, there is generally a redemption period after the tax sale before ownership can ultimately be lost. This is the one section of the page where the sensible move is not to learn the whole system recreationally.

If you have delinquent taxes that may be headed toward sale, check your property with the Cook County Treasurer and deal with the specific bill.

Chicagoland deadline calendar FAQ

When is my Cook County property tax appeal deadline?

There is no single countywide date.

The Cook County Assessor opens appeals township by township. Your reassessment notice gives you the exact filing deadline, and the Assessor publishes each township's window on its online calendar.

Expect roughly a month. Use the date printed on your notice rather than counting days yourself.

How do I find out which township I'm in?

Use the Cook County Assessor's address-search tool.

Do not assume your municipality and township have the same name. They are different geographic systems, because apparently one system of place names would have left too much unused administrative capacity.

Is the Board of Review appeal separate from the Assessor appeal?

Yes.

The Assessor is the first opportunity to appeal. The Board of Review has a separate window later in the process.

You can file with the Board even if you did not appeal to the Assessor first.

Which Cook County exemptions renew automatically?

The Homeowner, Senior Citizen, Persons with Disabilities and WWII Veterans exemptions auto-renew. The Home Improvement Exemption is applied automatically when eligible.

The Senior Freeze, Returning Veterans and Veterans with Disabilities exemptions require annual filing. The Longtime Homeowner Exemption also requires filing, but the Assessor first identifies eligible homeowners and sends the application.

What happens if I miss the Senior Freeze deadline?

Cook County says the Senior Freeze must be filed every year. Missing a year means losing that year's benefit.

There is conflicting or incomplete official guidance about what a missed year does to the freeze's base year after you resume filing, so I would not rely on the more dramatic explanations floating around online. Ask the Assessor about your specific property.

If you missed an exemption on a bill that has already been paid, also check whether a Certificate of Error is available.

Can I get back an exemption I missed in a past year?

Often, yes.

Cook County's Certificate of Error process can correct qualifying missed exemptions on prior tax bills. The Assessor currently allows claims going back about four tax years.

Check the current eligible years before applying because two Assessor pages were giving slightly different ranges when this guide was researched.

When does Chicago's winter overnight parking ban start and end?

December 1 through April 1, from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m., on designated streets.

It applies regardless of whether there is snow.

Chicago also has a separate two-inch snow parking ban covering additional streets.

What's the late fee for a Chicago city sticker?

The late fee is $60, or $30 for a senior-discounted sticker.

The more important number may be 15: you can begin receiving tickets on the 16th day after the sticker expires, even though the late-fee grace period lasts 30 days.

When is Cook County's second-installment property tax bill due?

October 1, 2026. The county posted the tax year 2025 bills online August 18, with paper copies mailing September 1.

What's the property tax appeal deadline in DuPage, Will, Lake and Kane counties?

The durable rule is to watch for publication of your assessment and then count 30 calendar days, while confirming the deadline with the county.

Will County had published a September 14, 2026 deadline when this page was checked. DuPage had not published dates for any of its nine townships. Kane had a mixture of published and pending township deadlines. We could not verify Lake County's current township table.

If you are waiting on one of these, watch the county assessment page and the assessment notice in your mail.

That is also the simplest way to use this page: put the fixed dates on your calendar, but pay attention when property-tax mail arrives. A notice that looks like one more piece of county correspondence may be the thing that starts the deadline.