The CPA Exam changes in July 2027.
New delivery platform, new interface, an eleven-day testing blackout, and score releases go quarterly for at least a year. Here is the published schedule, why it is happening, and what it does to your plan.
What is changing
Beginning July 2027, the exam moves to a new technology platform with a new user interface. The content does not change: same Blueprints, same sections, same MCQs and simulations. What changes is the calendar. Core sections stop releasing scores every few weeks and move to quarterly windows through at least mid-2028.
There is also a hard stop first. No CPA Exam appointments exist July 1 through 11, 2027. Testing pauses so the old system can finish processing and be retired, and resumes on the new platform July 12. If you were planning to sit in early July 2027, you cannot. Both schedules are laid out on the CPA exam testing windows page, including the blackout and the Discipline windows, which do not match the Core ones.
Today, a core score arrives one to three weeks after your file reaches the AICPA. The last fast window: file by June 30, 2027, score July 13, 2027. After that:
Core sections · 2027 Q3 through 2028 Q2
| Testing dates | Target score release |
|---|---|
| July 12 – September 30, 2027 | October 19, 2027 |
| October 1 – December 15, 2027 | December 28, 2027 |
| January 1 – March 15, 2028 | March 28, 2028 |
| April 1 – June 15, 2028 | June 27, 2028 |
Discipline sections · 2027 Q3 through 2028 Q2
| Testing dates | Target score release |
|---|---|
| July 12 – August 12, 2027 | September 28, 2027 |
| October 1 – 31, 2027 | December 17, 2027 |
| January 1 – 31, 2028 | March 17, 2028 |
| April 1 – 30, 2028 | June 16, 2028 |
Why the delay exists, and why it should end
This is not a policy change and nobody is being punished. It is psychometrics. A question's difficulty is not a property of the question, it is measured from how thousands of real candidates answered it on a particular system. Move the exam to a new platform and change the navigation, the layout and the accessibility features, and the same question can perform differently. Until the AICPA has collected enough response data on the new platform to recalibrate its items, it cannot convert a raw performance into a scaled 75 with any confidence. Batching the releases is how they buy the sample.
The useful part: the AICPA describes the adjusted schedule as lasting 12 months following the launch, and the published tables stop at June 2028. So the working assumption is that quarterly releases are a transition measure, not the new normal, and something closer to today's cadence returns after mid-2028. Nothing beyond June 2028 has been published, so treat that as an expectation and not a promise. We will update this page when they publish more.
What a failed section costs after July 12, 2027
Walk one through. You sit FAR on August 20, 2027. Your score arrives October 19. It is a 71. The earliest retake window is already half over, so you sit again in late October and see that score December 28. One failed section: four months from first sitting to a passing score, against a 30-month clock that never stops running. Today the same miss costs about six weeks.
The 30-month window does not pause for the transition. Every quarter a score spends in transit is a quarter you cannot spend studying the next section, because you do not know whether there is a next section.
The math to beat it
Finish all four sections before July 12, 2027, and none of this touches you. The method is about 95 hours per exam: 2,000 MCQs, 50 simulations, no lectures. Four exams is roughly 380 hours. From October 2026 that is under 10 hours a week. Already passed some? Subtract 95 hours per section done.
The candidates who got caught in the 2024 CPA Evolution transition remember how the last-minute rush went: booked-out testing centers and score delays measured in months. The people who finished early do not remember it at all.
Put your exam dates in the planner →
Schedule from the AICPA's published target score release dates and platform transition announcement, as of September 2026. All dates are subject to change; those are their capital letters, not ours. If the links break, Google it.