If you are graduating in 2026, you have almost certainly been told to head to Serangoon Broadway. It is the appointed academic-dress vendor for NUS and NTU, among other schools, so this is where your gown, hood and mortarboard come from whether you like it or not. The decision that actually costs you money is renting versus buying, and then how much you spend on the photos afterwards. On NTU's 2026 schedule, a bachelor's full set rented for $28.30 plus a $30 refundable deposit, or cost $39.20 to buy outright. This guide breaks down the real numbers, how the 2026 ordering calendar ran, and what graduation photos cost in and out of the studio.
Serangoon Broadway is a one-stop graduation-services company. It has supplied academic dress to Singapore's universities for over two decades, which is why your faculty email points you there by default. The shop runs Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 8pm, and closes on Mondays and public holidays.
Two things happen under that roof. The first is the regulated part: collecting the official gown, hood and mortarboard your university approves for the convocation stage. The second is the optional, higher-margin part: studio portraits, family photography, framing and add-ons like free makeup or a loaned blazer. The first is a fixed cost you cannot avoid. The second is fully negotiable, and it is where most grads quietly overspend.
An academic-dress set is three pieces: the gown, the hood (its colour signals your faculty and degree level) and the headwear, which is a mortarboard for bachelor's and master's grads or a bonnet for PhDs. The figures below are NTU's published 2026 schedule with Serangoon Broadway (as of October 2026), and other schools set their own. Singapore Polytechnic's 2026 robe, for example, has no hood or mortarboard and rented for $25.07 plus a $27.25 deposit, or cost $52.32 to buy, GST included. Check your own school's hire form.
The gap between renting and buying is smaller than people expect. For an NTU bachelor's set, buying costs about $11 more than renting once you ignore the deposit, and the deposit is refunded when you return the set in good condition by the deadline. So the genuine question is not price, it is whether you will ever wear a gown again.
| Degree level | Buy (full set) | Rent fee | Refundable deposit | Rent total upfront |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bachelor's | $39.20 | $28.30 | $30.00 | $58.30 |
| Master's | $43.60 | $32.70 | $30.00 | $62.70 |
| PhD (bonnet) | $92.65 | $59.95 | $50.00 | $109.95 |
Academic dress runs on a strict calendar tied to each university's convocation. The dates below are NTU's 2026 schedule with Serangoon Broadway, and every one of those windows has now closed. Other schools keep their own calendars (Singapore Polytechnic's 2026 rentals were due back by 17 May), so check your school's hire form for the next cycle. NTU makes academic dress compulsory on stage and turns away graduates who are not properly dressed, so the order deadline matters.
Booking early matters for a practical reason: collection appointment slots near your ceremony date fill quickly, and a last-minute rush means queueing during the busiest week of the season.
The gown hides less than you think. Universities keep convocation formal, so what you wear underneath has a published code, and the photos will show it. Get this right and you avoid the classic mistake of wearing shorts and slippers because nobody told you the gown is open at the front.
The lists below follow NTU's published code. Serangoon Broadway advises male graduands to wear a tie and Singapore Polytechnic requires a dark one, so check your own school's dress-code page. The point is to look formal from the knees up and the ankles down, because that is what is visible on stage and in family shots.
Update, 13 October 2026: Serangoon Broadway's price list starts family portraits at $300 for an 8R print, not $180, and Werkz's own list starts at $180 for an individual shoot and $320 for a family, not $150 to $250. The gown is the cheap part. Where budgets blow out is the family portrait package, which at the convocation-season studios can run from the low hundreds into the low thousands once you add prints and large frames. Serangoon Broadway's own price list has family portraits on promotion from $300 for an 8R print to $2,880 for a 60R canvas, against normal prices of $380 to $3,680, and individual portraits from $180 (Serangoon Broadway, GST included, as of October 2026). That is fine if you want the full heritage-studio treatment, but it is far from your only option.
Independent studios shoot graduation portraits too, and their prices overlap with Serangoon Broadway's. If you are weighing what to spend, treat it like any other one-off purchase: decide the outcome you want (a few good digital files, or a wall-sized framed print) before you walk in, then pick the cheapest provider that delivers it. A quick run through a monthly budget check before convocation week keeps the celebration from eating into your first paycheck.
Werkz, an independent studio, publishes its graduation price list: from $180 for an individual portrait and $320 for a family, each with an 8x10 print and no GST (Werkz, as of October 2026). We could not check other studios' prices against their own pages, so ask each one for its current list.
Convocation is the moment your finances change. The gown and photos are a few hundred dollars; the decisions that follow are worth tens of thousands. If you took a study loan, your repayment clock typically starts after you graduate, so map your instalments against your starting salary before lifestyle creep sets in. Our breakdown of fresh-grad starting salaries is a sober benchmark for what most courses actually pay in 2026.
Before you spend on the ceremony, it is worth checking your overall financial health and setting up a simple emergency fund. Graduation is a better time than most to build one habit that compounds, because every year you start saving earlier is a year your money has to grow.
As of October 2026, a bachelor's full set (gown, hood, mortarboard) rents for about $28.30 plus a refundable $30 deposit, or you can buy it for around $39.20. Master's and PhD sets cost more, and exact figures are printed on your university's academic-dress hire form.
Rent if this is your only convocation and you want no clutter, since the deposit is refunded and an NTU bachelor's set effectively costs $28.30. Buy if you want unlimited photo time with no return deadline or simply want to keep it; at NTU the premium is about $11 for a bachelor's set. A sibling can reuse a bought set only at the same university and degree level, with the same hood colour.
At NTU, online ordering opened on 15 May 2026, orders and collection appointments had to be in by 30 June, collection ran from 4 June to 19 July, and rentals were due back between 1 and 31 August. Those windows have closed. Other schools keep their own calendars, so check your school's hire form for the next cycle's dates.
No. Serangoon Broadway is the official gown vendor, but you can shoot portraits anywhere. Independent studios set their own prices (Werkz's list starts at $180 for an individual portrait), and a campus shoot with a friend's camera costs nothing.
This is general financial information for Singapore, not personal financial advice. Figures change, so verify current rates against the official sources above before acting. See our full disclaimer.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).