The current PEP closes at the end of December 2028. The new CPA Professional Program launches in January 2027. Here is what is confirmed, what is still unknown, and why our advice is to stay where you are.
Similar climb, different milestones
The whole journey at a glance. Four modules, each with its own exam, and twenty-four months of practical experience that moves to just before the summit — where it stops being something you finish afterwards and becomes a gate.
A new structure, much of the same content
Competency Map 2.0 shifts the emphasis toward critical thinking, technology and decision-making, and there will be revisions to what is tested. But most of the underlying technical content carries over. What changes fundamentally is the structure: Core, Elective, Capstone and the CFE all disappear, replaced by four modules with four separate exams.
Foundational Development
Builds your specific, foundational and sub-foundational competencies, starts your advanced professional competencies and develops the CPA ethical mindset. The exam is not publicly disclosed.
CPA Core
Common strengthens Financial Reporting, Assurance and Trust, Big Data and Analytics, and Tax. Licensure adds depth in those areas plus Non-financial Reporting, and is required for a public accounting licence.
CPA Leadership
Grows the ethical mindset and advanced professional competencies through decision-making across all competencies. The case carries deliberate ambiguity and more to do than the time allows.
CPA Professional Readiness
Interactive case-based learning and the final step before applying for membership. You cannot start this module until all your practical experience is complete.
Every date between now and the wall
Work backwards from these. The two in red are not deadlines you negotiate — they are the points at which the decision stops being yours.
The first of the three remaining sittings in the current program.
From this point you may voluntarily transition into the new program.
Start Core 1 in this term and you get two attempts, not three.
The last chance to sit Core 1 in the current program.
Running alongside the second-to-last CFE.
The final sitting in the current program. There is no rewrite after it.
Everything must be finished by now — modules, both capstones, the CFE and your practical experience.
Anyone not finished transitions. Refusing means your enrolment is cancelled.
Three situations, and only one is a decision
Most of the worry about transitioning belongs to people who do not actually have a choice to make. Work out which of these is you before you worry about the rest.
CPA Ontario and CPA Western both advise finishing the current program rather than switching early, and we agree. The current CFE is predictable and there are years of past exams to practise on. The new program has neither, and CPA Canada’s own education team has said the new exams will be harder. Finish what you started if the schedule allows it.
If you are in the current program, any practical experience you have earned must be reported under the current PER system before you transition. Under no circumstances can you transition to the new programme and then report past PERT experience under the new rules. Whichever way you end up going, get your reporting current now — it is the one thing that becomes worthless if you leave it until after the move.
Eligibility and exemptions have not been published
If you qualified with a body outside Canada — most often ICAI, ICAP, ICMAP or ICAN — the rules that matter most to you are the ones nobody has yet.
IndiaICAI
PakistanICAP & ICMAP
NigeriaICAN
Everything we have published on the transition
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