Twenty-three years. That is how long Holly Macleod has been standing on the same stretch of Indonesian reef, turning qualified Divemasters into certified scuba instructors — and in 2026, her PADI training centre in the Gili Islands has scheduled ten full Instructor Development Courses across nearly every month of the calendar year.
The operation barely pauses.
Built on more than three decades of continuous presence in the Gili Islands — longer than most dive operators in the region have existed at all — the centre Macleod runs has become one of Southeast Asia’s most established pathways into professional dive instruction. She holds Platinum status within PADI’s course director framework. That is the highest rating the organisation awards, reflecting sustained training volume and quality assessment across an extended career. It is not common. And finding it attached to 23 years at a single location, in one of the world’s genuinely great dive destinations, is rarer still.
What does the IDC actually involve? Three weeks, roughly — knowledge development, confined-water teaching practice, open-water instructional evaluations, formal assessment — concluding with an official PADI Instructor Examination that candidates must pass before the certification is awarded. PADI is the world’s largest recreational diver training organisation, and the IDC is the professional threshold that separates a divemaster from an instructor. Cross it and you can teach. Miss it and you come back for the next intake.
In the Gili Islands, the next intake is never far away.
The 2026 schedule runs from January through December — ten courses, ten examination windows, structured at roughly six-week intervals that keep the programme in almost continuous operation. The first cohort begins 7th January, examinations on 27th and 28th. From there the calendar moves steadily: February into March, March into April, May into June, all the way through to the final course of the year opening 18th November and closing with examinations on 8th and 9th December. The only meaningful gap falls between the July and August cohorts — a brief window before the programme picks straight back up.
Full 2026 IDC and Examination Schedule:
| Course Dates | Instructor Examination |
|---|---|
| 7 – 26 January | 27 – 28 January |
| 11 February – 2 March | 3 – 4 March |
| 18 March – 6 April | 7 – 8 April |
| 22 April – 11 May | 12 – 13 May |
| 27 May – 15 June | 16 – 17 June |
| 1 – 20 July | 21 – 22 July |
| 5 – 24 August | 25 – 26 August |
| 9 – 28 September | 29 – 30 September |
| 14 October – 2 November | 3 – 4 November |
| 18 November – 7 December | 8 – 9 December |
Ten intakes. For a Divemaster who has been weighing the move to instructor level but kept delaying — waiting for the right moment, the right location, the right course director — that schedule removes most of the excuses.
The Gili Islands matter here beyond mere logistics. Gili Trawangan, Gili Meno and Gili Air sit off the northwest coast of Lombok and have drawn recreational divers from across the world for thirty-plus years — coral reefs, strong seasonal currents, reliable visibility, established sites that professional instructors will encounter versions of throughout their careers. Learning to teach diving in that environment is not the same as learning to teach it in a cold-water quarry or a heated indoor pool. Candidates arrive knowing the theory; they leave having practised it somewhere that demands real skill.
That distinction — between training and training somewhere that matters — is part of what Macleod has built over two decades.
Beyond the IDC itself, the centre delivers the full span of PADI’s professional development pathway. Divemaster training. Emergency First Response Instructor courses. Instructor Crossover Programmes for professionals certified through other agencies. Specialty Instructor Training, Master Scuba Diver Trainer preparation, IDC Staff Instructor courses, and Course Director preparation for those moving into the upper tier of PADI’s educator framework. A dive professional could, in theory, progress through multiple career stages without leaving the island.
Some do exactly that.
Still — ten courses, near year-round scheduling, a Platinum Course Director with 23 years of institutional memory — the question for any certified Divemaster reading this is not whether the programme is credible.
It is which of those ten dates fits the plan.
