Certification Renewal

Microsoft has changed the certification renewal process so now instead of having to take the certification exam/s every 2 years, you just have to complete renewal assessment every year.

Danger

Once your certification expires, you can only renew it by paying for and retaking the full certification exam(s) again.

It is extremely recommended to renew your certifications on time.

You also need to finish the renewal assessement before the certification expires. If you aren’t able to complete the assessment before the certification expires, the renewal assessment will throw an error when you submit it and the result will not be submitted.

You only renew certifications so if you for example earned Azure Solutions Architect Expert certification by passing the AZ-303 and AZ-304 you only need to do one assessment for the certification. It doesn’t matter that the exams changed in the meantime as long as the certification itself isn’t being retired.

You also don’t need to hold the prerequisite certification for you to renew expert certifications, those are not tied to each other. But it is highly recommended to renew all certifications because the process is way easier than if you had to take the exams in the future (also the system is broken so you have to create tickets to be able to take the exams again and to get the certification manually renewed).

Note

Exams themselves don’t expire which means you have as much time as you need to complete the certification. The only issue is when the exam is being retired, you will either have to complete the certification before that happens or you will need to pass the new exams all over again.

Renewal assessment:

• Consists of around 25-40 questions (depending on the question bank you randomly get)
• It is an open book test so you can freely use the internet to help you with the answering
• Has no time limit to complete it
• After the initial 2 attempts you have to wait 24h before attempting it again
• You will get the chance to pass the assessment 180 days before the certification expires so you get a lot of chances and losing the certificate is only caused because you didn’t want to do it
• Shows you how you did in the areas you are being tested on
• Is free!

You can access the renewals in your certification dashboard here: Microsoft Certification Dashboard

Caution

You are still required to follow the program agreement and Non-Disclosure Agreement. You can find it here. So you are not allowed to copy-paste the questions into AI chatbots for example.

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Sources

Renew your Microsoft Certifications | Microsoft Learn

Renew your Microsoft Certifications - FAQ | Microsoft Learn

Exams don’t expire | Microsoft Certification Support