Can You Trade Futures on Weekends? CME's 24/7 Contracts

Mostly no: ES, NQ, gold (GC), Micro Gold (MGC) and crude oil futures still stop for 49 hours every weekend, from Friday 4:00 p.m. CT to Sunday 5:00 p.m. CT. As of October 2026 the exceptions at CME are its cryptocurrency futures and options, 1-Ounce Gold and 100-Ounce Silver, which trade 24/7 (around the clock except a 2-hour Saturday maintenance window and a 2-minute weekday break). Even those are off limits at the two prop firms whose rules we could verify, which make you flat before Friday's close.

Key takeaway

Per CME's own schedules, as of October 2026 only three CME product families trade through the weekend: crypto futures and options (since May 29, 2026), 1-Ounce Gold (since July 24, 2026) and 100-Ounce Silver (since September 11, 2026). They pause only Saturday 2:00 to 4:00 a.m. CT and 2 minutes each weekday. ES, NQ, GC, MGC and crude stay shut for 49 hours, and Topstep and MyFundedFutures still require you to be flat before the Friday close.

Do ES, NQ, gold and crude futures trade on Saturday or Sunday?

No. ES, NQ, GC, MGC and CL on CME Globex close at 4:00 p.m. CT on Friday and reopen at 5:00 p.m. CT (6:00 p.m. ET) on Sunday, so none of them trades on Saturday.

NinjaTrader's E-mini S&P 500 contract page gives the same week, with a "60-minute daily maintenance break starting at 5:00 pm ET" on weekdays. Measured on the weekend of October 16 to 18, 2026, the closure lasts 49 hours. The standard Sunday-to-Friday CME week and its holidays have their own article. Myth: futures never trade on weekends. Verdict: partly true, and false for three CME product families since 2026.

Which CME futures trade 24/7 as of October 2026?

Three product families: CME cryptocurrency futures and options since May 29, 2026, COMEX 1-Ounce Gold since July 24, 2026, and COMEX 100-Ounce Silver since September 11, 2026. Bitcoin Volatility futures joined on June 1, 2026, according to CME's launch release as reported by FX News Group.

CME first announced 24/7 crypto plans on October 2, 2025, as CoinDesk reported that day, and set the date on February 19, 2026, promising "at least a two-hour weekly maintenance period over the weekend" in its crypto launch release. Each family's first weekend session opened at 4:30 p.m. CT on a Friday, per CME's wiki pages for crypto, 1-Ounce Gold and 100-Ounce Silver. The table shows each contract's weekend status. This article covers CME; Coinbase Derivatives, a separate CFTC-regulated exchange, has offered 24/7 bitcoin and ether futures since May 9, 2025, per The Block.

Contract	Size	Weekend status	Date	Weekly no-trade time
ES, NQ	Standard index futures	Closed	Unchanged	49-hour weekend plus 60 minutes Monday to Thursday
Gold (GC)	100 troy ounces	Closed	Unchanged	Same as ES
Micro Gold (MGC)	10 troy ounces	Closed	Unchanged	Same as ES
1-Ounce Gold (1OZ)	1 troy ounce, cash-settled	24/7	Since July 24, 2026	Saturday 2:00 to 4:00 a.m. CT, weekdays 4:00 to 4:02 p.m. CT
100-Ounce Silver (SIC)	100 ounces	24/7	Since September 11, 2026	Same as 1OZ
CME crypto futures and options	Various	24/7	Since May 29, 2026	Same as 1OZ
Crypto Spot-Quoted Futures	Various	Closed	5-day schedule kept	Weekend closure
Crude oil (CL)	Standard	Closed	Unchanged	Same as ES
10-Barrel WTI (TCL)	10 barrels	Never launched	Withdrawn October 2, 2026	Not listed

Read the size column first: the only CME gold contract that trades on a Saturday is the 1-ounce one, one hundredth of a GC.

Two details most weekend explainers miss. CME's wiki says "Cryptocurrency Spot Quoted Futures (SQF) will remain on a 5 day schedule", and when 1-Ounce Gold went 24/7, CME delisted its TAS (trade at settlement) instruments and stopped supporting block trades in it. Myths settled: only crypto trades on weekends (false since July 24, 2026), and all gold futures trade 24/7 (false: GC and MGC did not move).

Picture the 49 hours as two lanes. The top lane (ES, NQ, GC, MGC, CL) is dark from Friday 4:00 p.m. CT to Sunday 5:00 p.m. CT. The bottom lane (crypto, 1-Ounce Gold, 100-Ounce Silver) stays lit except Friday 4:00 to 4:02 p.m. CT and Saturday 2:00 to 4:00 a.m. CT: 46.97 tradable hours, 95.85% of the weekend.

Same clock, same news, two outcomes: most futures sit dark for 49 hours while the 24/7 group trades all but about 2 of them.

What happened to CME's 24/7 crude oil futures?

They never traded. CME announced a 24/7 10-Barrel WTI contract on June 11, 2026, the CFTC stayed its listing on July 9, and CME withdrew the filing on October 2, 2026, so no CME crude contract trades on weekends as of October 2026.

CME's June 11 release said "The new oil contract will be 1/10th the size of CME Group's existing Micro WTI futures and will launch on August 30." NYMEX self-certified it on July 8 in Submission No. 26-186 as a financially settled 10-barrel contract, Globex code TCL.

One day later the CFTC announced a stay, and Chairman Michael S. Selig said "As I've said repeatedly, we do not take a one-size-fits all approach to 24/7 trading." On October 2, CME Chairman and CEO Terry Duffy cited industry concern about 24/7 energy trading without further due diligence and said in the suspension release: "Therefore, we are withdrawing our filing to launch this product at this time."

Picture the June 11 announcement as a fork. The gold branch runs to a live market on July 24, and silver joins it on September 11. The crude branch runs through the July 8 filing, hits the July 9 stay, passes its planned August 30 launch with nothing listed, and ends at the October 2 withdrawal.

Metals got through and energy did not: the crude branch stopped at a CFTC stay one day after filing and never reached its launch date.

Insider point: CME's 24/7 initiatives wiki page, last updated August 12, 2026, still reads "CME Group is launching three commodity 24/7 trading initiatives." Guides written before October 2, including one dated September 30, 2026, still list 10-Barrel WTI as a weekend contract. Myth settled: CME has no 24/7 crude.

The wider question is open. The CFTC issued a request for comment on June 22, 2026 on extending standard futures, including crude oil, to 24/7 trading; we found no published decision as of October 16, 2026.

Does 24/7 futures trading mean the market never closes?

No. CME's 24/7 contracts stop matching orders for 2 hours every Saturday (2:00 to 4:00 a.m. CT) and for 2 minutes every weekday (4:00 to 4:02 p.m. CT), which leaves 165.83 tradable hours in a 168-hour week.

NYMEX's filing for the crude contract that never launched states the same schedule in one line: "CME Globex: 24/7 with the exception of the following maintenance windows: Saturday 2:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. CT, Monday-Friday 4:00p.m. to 4:02 p.m. CT". Each pause ends with a short pre-open in which nothing matches. The table compares a full week of each kind of contract.

Computed by Phoenix Technologies from CME's published schedules; method: standard = (5 x 24 - 1) - 4 x 1; 24/7 = 168 - 2 - 5 x 2/60; holidays and early closes ignored.

Item	Standard CME product (ES, NQ, GC, MGC, CL)	CME 24/7 product (crypto, 1OZ, 100-Ounce Silver)
Weekly span	Sunday 5:00 p.m. to Friday 4:00 p.m. CT = 119 hours	168 hours
Weekday breaks	4 x 60 minutes = 4 hours	5 x 2 minutes = 10 minutes
Weekend closure	49 hours (outside the span)	Saturday 2:00 to 4:00 a.m. CT = 2 hours
Tradable hours per week	115	165.83
Difference	Baseline	50.83 hours more, 44.20% more

Ignoring the 2-minute breaks gives 166 hours and 44.35%; the gap is small, yet an order sent at 4:01 p.m. CT will not match. Myth settled: 24/7 does not mean the market never stops.

Set the two weeks side by side on one baseline: a 115-hour bar and a 165.83-hour bar. The 50.83-hour difference is the 49-hour weekend plus 4 hours of weekday breaks, minus the 24/7 contract's own 2 hours and 10 minutes of pauses.

The extra 50.83 hours are almost all the weekend; the 24/7 contract still loses 2 hours and 10 minutes a week to fixed pauses.

What trade date does a Saturday futures trade get?

The next business day. CME states that weekend and holiday trades from Friday evening through Sunday evening carry "a trade date of the following business day, with clearing, settlement and regulatory reporting processed the following business day as well."

So a Saturday fill in 1-Ounce Gold is booked to Monday's trade date (Tuesday's if Monday is an exchange holiday), and its profit or loss lands in Monday's settlement cycle. If your account runs a daily reset at the CME settlement, Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday trades all count toward Monday. Myth settled: a Saturday trade is not booked or settled on Saturday.

The CME pages we read do not say how CME marks a price during the weekend.

How does a weekend gap hit GC compared with 1-Ounce Gold?

GC cannot react to Saturday news until Sunday 5:00 p.m. CT, so the whole move arrives as one gap, while 1-Ounce Gold can trade on the news on Saturday outside the 2:00 to 4:00 a.m. CT window. The same illustrative $30 per ounce move is worth $3,000 on one GC, $300 on one MGC and $30 on one 1-Ounce Gold contract.

GC is 100 troy ounces with a 0.10 tick worth $10.00, per KGI Securities' GC specification; 1-Ounce Gold has a 0.25 tick worth $0.25, per KGI's 1-Ounce Gold specification.

Saturday news moves gold $30 per ounce lower.
GC: $30 x 100 = $3,000 per contract, or 300 ticks of $10. MGC: $30 x 10 = $300. 1OZ: $30 x 1 = $30, or 120 ticks of $0.25.
Your GC sell stop sits $10 below Friday's close, a planned risk of $1,000 per contract. It cannot trigger on Saturday, because GC does not trade.
Sunday opens $30 lower. The stop triggers at or near the open, about $20 per ounce past its price: about $2,000 per contract of extra loss, $3,000 in all against $1,000 planned.
A 1OZ holder could have exited on Saturday. Matching one GC's exposure would take 100 of them.

Picture both contracts on one price axis. GC's line stays flat at Friday's close with its stop $10 below, then drops $30 at the Sunday open, straight past the stop. The 1-Ounce Gold line steps down on Saturday when the news lands, with a shaded block from 2:00 to 4:00 a.m. CT where it cannot trade.

A closed market does not stop the news, it only delays the fill: the GC stop meant to cap the loss at $1,000 fills at the Sunday open.

Saturday access does not promise a good exit. A resting stop order on 1OZ fills at whatever the Saturday book offers, and slippage past a stop applies in full. Holding GC over the weekend means carrying overnight rather than day-trade margin, and a gap on a continuous chart may be a roll gap, not a weekend gap.

Myth: CME bitcoin gaps always fill. Verdict: unsupported. The day before crypto went 24/7, CoinDesk wrote "As it stands, there are currently three open CME gaps, all created this year."

Does anyone trade futures on weekends?

Yes, at a modest scale: 1-Ounce Gold averaged at least 17,500 contracts per weekend over its first 8 weekends, roughly one fifth of the 87,000-contract average day CME reported for the first half of 2026. Crypto's first 24/7 weekend traded more than 7,200 contracts and silver's 2,387.

According to CME's July 27, 2026 release, reproduced by Mondo Visione, nearly 15,000 1-Ounce Gold contracts, about $60 million notional, traded in the first weekend; Jin Hennig, CME's Global Head of Metals, said "Gold is a global safe-haven asset, and global events don't stop on weekends". CME's August 11 release counted over 53,000 contracts, about $219 million, in weekend sessions since July 24 (three weekends by our count).

By CME's September 14 release, reported by FX News Group, the total passed 140,000 contracts and $600 million over what we count as 8 weekends, about 17,500 contracts and $75.0 million each; these are lower bounds, since CME wrote "over". Silver's first weekend drew over $15 million, and crypto's about $50 million.

CME's releases count contracts and notional, not spreads or book depth. A July 27, 2026 report on the first 1-Ounce Gold weekend, republished by Bullionworld from Mining.com, said buyers and sellers were "typically less than $1 apart on price throughout the weekend", and CME's Jin Hennig said the gap at times narrowed to 25 cents, which is one $0.25 tick. Treat a weekend like the thinner overnight session and check the live book before sizing. Myth settled: weekend sessions are not empty.

Can you trade weekend futures at a prop firm?

Not at the two firms we could verify. As of October 2026, Topstep requires every position closed by 3:10 p.m. CT each weekday and MyFundedFutures auto-liquidates at 4:10 p.m. EST, so neither lets you hold through the weekend, and neither lists 1-Ounce Gold or 100-Ounce Silver.

Topstep's help center gives the Friday close as "3:10 PM CT (closed till Sunday at 5:00 PM)" and bans swing trading. It permits Micro Bitcoin (MBT) and Micro Ether (MET), which are 24/7 contracts at CME, but only inside its own weekday window.

MyFundedFutures lets you trade from the 6:00 p.m. EST Globex open to 4:10 p.m. EST, and its instrument list says "MBT is treated as a mini contract." Neither firm's page mentions Saturday orders. Apex Trader Funding and Tradeify blocked our reader this round, so they are left out; check any firm's current rules before buying.

Lay it out as a grid: rows for your own broker account, Topstep and MyFundedFutures; columns for 24/7 crypto listed, 1-Ounce Gold listed, weekend holding and flat-by time. Only the broker row has weekend access, and your FCM (the futures commission merchant that clears your account) may set its own weekend margin or limits, which no broker page we read spells out.

Both verified firms list 24/7 crypto contracts and still close you out before the weekend starts.

Myth settled: a 24/7 contract is not a 24/7 permission. For multi-day exposure on a funded account, start with the firms that allow overnight holds and how they treat news events and blackout windows. A trade copier changes none of this: copying into accounts that must be flat by Friday's close only multiplies the breach.

How do you decide whether weekend futures matter to you?

Match the contract to the account: weekend trading needs both a 24/7 contract and an account that permits it.

If you trade ES, NQ, GC, MGC or CL: plan for a 49-hour closure. A position held over it can gap through your stop, so size it as if the stop were not there.
If you want to act on weekend gold news: 1-Ounce Gold is the only CME gold contract open, at one hundredth of GC's exposure.
If you trade at Topstep or MyFundedFutures: be flat by 3:10 p.m. CT or 4:10 p.m. EST on Friday; weekend contracts do not apply.
If you hold a 24/7 contract in your own account: nothing matches Saturday 2:00 to 4:00 a.m. CT or weekdays 4:00 to 4:02 p.m. CT, and ask your broker about weekend margin.
Count every fill from Friday evening to Sunday evening in Monday's profit and loss.
If you want weekend crude exposure: no CME contract offers it as of October 2026.

If you copy a 24/7 contract across your own accounts, Thor runs on cloud servers 24/7 rather than on a home PC, but a copier can only place what each follower's platform accepts. We found no firm that publishes which platforms and data feeds route weekend orders, so test a Saturday order with one contract first.

Go deeper

Frequently asked questions

Are futures open on Sunday?

Yes, from Sunday evening: ES, NQ, gold and crude futures reopen at 5:00 p.m. CT, which is 6:00 p.m. ET. Before that, only the 24/7 contracts (CME crypto, 1-Ounce Gold and 100-Ounce Silver) trade on Sunday. A Sunday trade in those carries Monday's trade date.

Can you trade E-mini S&P 500 futures on Saturday?

No. ES closes at 4:00 p.m. CT on Friday and does not trade again until 5:00 p.m. CT on Sunday. CME has not moved ES or NQ to 24/7 in any release we reviewed, and the CFTC's June 22, 2026 request for comment on 24/7 trading has no published outcome we could find as of October 16, 2026.

Can you trade Micro Bitcoin futures on the weekend?

At CME, yes: its cryptocurrency futures and options have traded 24/7 since May 29, 2026, apart from the Saturday 2:00 to 4:00 a.m. CT window. At Topstep, which lists Micro Bitcoin and Micro Ether, no, because positions must be closed by 3:10 p.m. CT on Friday and the platform is closed until Sunday at 5:00 p.m.

Is 1-Ounce Gold the same as Micro Gold?

No. Micro Gold (MGC) is 10 troy ounces and still closes for the weekend. 1-Ounce Gold (1OZ) is 1 troy ounce, cash-settled, listed on COMEX and trades 24/7 since July 24, 2026.

Can you trade silver futures on the weekend?

At CME, only COMEX 100-Ounce Silver (SIC), which has traded 24/7 since its first weekend session on Friday, September 11, 2026 at 4:30 p.m. CT. That first weekend saw 2,387 contracts traded, over $15 million notional, according to CME. MyFundedFutures restricts standard Silver (SI), and neither Topstep nor MyFundedFutures lists 100-Ounce Silver.

Do the 24/7 contracts trade on exchange holidays?

CME's schedules describe holiday trading together with weekend trading for these products. Any such trade carries the trade date of the following business day, with clearing and settlement processed that day.

Why did CME move crypto futures to 24/7?

Client demand. On October 2, 2025, CME said demand for around-the-clock crypto trading had grown because participants need to manage their risk every day of the week. Bitcoin Volatility futures followed the main crypto group on June 1, 2026.

Do CME bitcoin futures still gap on Monday?

There is no longer a weekend closure to create one: they now trade through the weekend and stop only for the 2-hour Saturday window and 2-minute weekday breaks. CoinDesk counted three unfilled CME bitcoin gaps from 2026 on the eve of the switch, so older gaps can still sit open on a chart.