Kavita Sharma, PMP, PgMP · checked against the PMI CCR Handbook, April 2026 · last reviewed September 2026

What is PMI’s CCR programme?

CCR stands for Continuing Certification Requirements. It is the rulebook that decides how you keep a PMI certification active after you pass the exam: how long your cycle runs, how many PDUs you owe, what counts as a PDU, and what happens if you miss the date. CCRS is the separate online system where you file those PDUs. This page defines the four terms and lists what PMI has changed, with dates.

Jump to what PMI changed

What is CCR?

CCR is PMI’s Continuing Certification Requirements programme. It applies to every active PMI certification holder and sets four things: the length of your certification cycle, the number of PDUs you must earn in it, the minimum you must earn in each Talent Triangle area, and the consequences of missing the deadline. PMI publishes the rules in one document, the CCR Certification Requirements Handbook. The current edition is April 2026.

CCR

The rules

A programme and a document. It tells you what you owe and by when. You never log in to CCR, because it is not software.

CCRS

The system

A website at ccrs.pmi.org. It is where you report what you earned, watch the bars fill, and pay the renewal fee.

What is a PDU?

PDU stands for Professional Development Unit. It is the unit CCR uses to measure your learning and your service to the profession. One PDU is one hour. You report them in steps of 0.25, so fifteen minutes is the smallest amount that counts. PDUs fall into exactly two categories.

Education

What you are taught

Courses, webinars, reading, podcasts, conference sessions, training at work. Every Education PDU is tagged to one Talent Triangle area. Each certification sets a minimum number of Education PDUs you cannot go below.

Giving Back

What you give the profession

Volunteering, mentoring, speaking, writing, creating content, and working as a practitioner. Giving Back is capped, not required. It can never be used to fill a Talent Triangle minimum, because those sit inside the Education requirement.

What is CCRS?

CCRS is the Continuing Certification Requirements System, PMI’s online platform at ccrs.pmi.org. You sign in with your PMI account. It shows your cycle start and end dates, a progress bar for each requirement, a searchable catalogue of activities that award PDUs, the form you use to report an activity, your transcript, and the renewal payment step.

Nothing counts until it is entered in CCRS. A course you finished, a webinar you watched, a year of work as a practitioner: none of it reaches your record automatically. You report it, or it did not happen.

PMI uses two expansions for the same acronym in the current handbook, Continuing Certification Requirements System and Continuing Certification Renewal System. They are the same platform.

What is the PMI Talent Triangle?

The Talent Triangle is PMI’s model of the three skill areas a project professional needs. Its job inside CCR is mechanical: every Education PDU you report is tagged to one of the three areas, and each certification carries a minimum in each area. Those minimums sit inside the Education requirement, not on top of your total, and Giving Back PDUs cannot reach them.

Ways of Working

The craft of delivery: predictive, agile, hybrid, tools, methods. Formerly Technical Project Management.

Power Skills

Leading people: communication, influence, negotiation, conflict, empathy. Formerly Leadership.

Business Acumen

Understanding the organisation: strategy, finance, benefits, governance, industry. Formerly Strategic and Business Management.

What has PMI changed in its CCR requirements, and when?

Four changes matter to anyone renewing today. The structure of the programme has been stable since 2015; what has moved since is the naming and the list of certifications inside it.

When What changed Who it affected
December 2015 CCR was realigned to the PMI Talent Triangle. The old numbered PDU categories were replaced by two, Education and Giving Back, and a minimum was introduced in each of the three Talent Triangle areas. The cap on PDUs for working as a practitioner was cut from 15 to 8 per cycle. PMP, PgMP, PfMP and PMI-PBA first, then the other certifications
1 October 2020 CAPM entered the CCR programme. CAPM holders now renew by earning PDUs and paying a fee instead of retaking the exam at the end of the cycle. CAPM
2022 The three Talent Triangle areas were renamed: Technical Project Management became Ways of Working, Leadership became Power Skills, and Strategic and Business Management became Business Acumen. PMI phased the change through the year across CCRS and the course catalogue. No quantity and no minimum changed. Every certification
2023 onward Newer certifications were folded into the programme, including PMI-CP, PMI-PMOCP and PMI-CPMAI, each with its own PDU total and its own area split. The Disciplined Agile certifications were kept outside CCR, on a separate one-year cycle of 7 PDUs. Holders of the newer certifications

PMI does not publish a change log for CCR, and the handbook carries no revision history. The dates above are the effective dates PMI stated when each change was announced. For 2022 PMI gave no month, only that the rename would be completed in phases during the year.

Do PDUs earned under the old names still count?

Yes. The rename was a relabelling exercise. PDUs already in your transcript map to the matching new area, and the minimums they satisfy are unchanged. Older certificates, course listings and third-party catalogues still show the pre-2022 names; read them as the same three areas.

How does a CCR cycle work?

Six mechanics govern every cycle, whichever certification you hold. Only the numbers change between certifications.

The cycle is three years

It starts the day you pass the exam and ends on the same date three years later. Renewing early does not move the end date.

One PDU is one hour

Reported in 0.25 increments. You claim the hours you actually spent, not the hours a course advertises.

Education has a floor, Giving Back a ceiling

You must reach the Education minimum. Education itself has no ceiling, so an entire cycle may be Education if that is how you earn it. Giving Back is optional and capped, so it can top up a total but never carry one.

Surplus rarely carries forward

Only PDUs above the requirement and earned in the final 12 months move to the next cycle. Anything earned earlier stays where it was.

The fee is due within 90 days

Ninety days after your cycle ends. Miss it and the certification is suspended for a year; miss that too and it expires, and only the exam brings it back. PDUs you earn during the suspension still count, so a late cycle can still be finished.

Keep your evidence for 18 months

PMI audits a sample of renewals. Hold certificates, registrations and contact details for 18 months past the end of the cycle.

Do AI skills count towards my PDUs?

Yes. CCR does not keep a list of approved subjects. An activity earns Education PDUs if it develops you as a project professional, and AI qualifies as squarely as risk, scheduling or stakeholder work. PMI registers AI courses in its own catalogue and awards PDUs for them across all three Talent Triangle areas.

As Ways of Working

Using AI in delivery: drafting a plan, estimating, testing risk assumptions, summarising status, automating the reporting nobody wants to write.

As Power Skills

Leading people through an AI change: explaining it, handling resistance, and deciding what stays a human judgement.

As Business Acumen

What AI means for the organisation: where it creates value, what it costs, data and confidentiality, and the governance around it.

Where the line sits

The test is relevance to your work as a project professional, not the word AI. Using AI to build a schedule, govern a programme or brief a sponsor is an Education PDU. A deep technical course in model training, taken for its own sake, is a harder claim to defend if you are audited. Ask what a reviewer would see: the activity has to develop you as a practitioner.

Who decides the area? For a course registered with PMI, the provider declares the split at registration and you claim exactly what the course states. For self-directed AI learning, a book, a webinar or an online course, you report it yourself under Education and choose the area honestly.

How many PDUs do I need?

That depends on the certification. The totals, the Education minimums, the area minimums, the Giving Back caps and the carry-over limits for every certification sit in one table, kept on its own page so there is only ever one copy to check.

The requirements table

Every certification, every number, checked against the current handbook.

What are the PDU requirements for my certification?

Your own gap

Copy the three numbers from your CCRS dashboard and the calculator tells you what is left.

How many PDUs am I still short?

You might be interested in

Everything below is pre-approved for PMI's CCR. Hold two certifications? The 60-PDU PMP pack counts for both.

Renew PMP – 60 PDU Bundle

Renew PMP – 60 PDU Bundle

Original price was: $169.00.Current price is: $145.00.
Add to cart
FREE 1 PDU COURSE FREE PDU NO CARD · INSTANT ACCESS · EASY CLAIM by Kavita Sharma

Free 1 PDU – Understanding PMI CCR and PDUs

$0.00
Add to cart
New
34 PDU | AI FOR PRODUCTIVITY | PMP RENEW All three Talent Triangle minimums in one course. Enhance your productivity with AI, step by step. by Kavita Sharma

34 PDUs: PMI Renewal Top-Up

$109.00
Add to cart

Questions people ask about CCR and CCRS

CCR is the set of rules and the handbook that carries them. CCRS is the website where you apply those rules to your own record. You read CCR once; you log in to CCRS every time you report a PDU.

In one PDF, the CCR Certification Requirements Handbook, free on pmi.org. The current edition is April 2026. It is the only document that settles an argument about a number.

No. Only the labels changed. The totals, the Education minimums, the area minimums and the Giving Back caps were all carried across untouched.

No. An activity has no effect on your cycle until it appears in your CCRS transcript. Report as you go rather than in one batch at the end, and the deadline stops being an event.

No. DASM, DASSM, DAC and DAVSC run on their own one-year cycle of 7 PDUs in agile topics, with their own fee. Do not measure them against the three-year tables.

Partly. Power Skills and Business Acumen Education PDUs are broad topics, so PMI applies them to every certification you hold. Ways of Working PDUs are tied to a domain, and Giving Back applies across all certifications. Each certification still has its own cycle dates and its own fee.

No. It starts the day you pass the exam, which is usually earlier than the date the certificate is issued. People who count from the certificate date give themselves a deadline that is weeks later than the real one.

Who checked these definitions?

Kavita Sharma. Sixteen years as a practitioner, including Microsoft, and the last ten years and more as a programme and project management coach. She holds the PMP and the PgMP and has renewed both through several cycles, so every rule on this page is one she has applied to her own record.

  • Significant Contributor to the PMBOK® Guide, Sixth Edition
  • Contributor to the PMBOK® Guide, Eighth Edition
  • Author of Pass PMP in 21 Days – Study Guide and Pass PgMP in 21 Days
  • Coaching PMP, PgMP, PMI-ACP and CAPM candidates since 2014

Source: PMI Continuing Certification Requirements Handbook, April 2026. Last checked September 2026. PMI publishes no revision history for the CCR programme; the dates above are the effective dates stated at the time of each change.

Claiming and reporting

How do I report PDUs in CCRS?

Why Was My PDU Claim Rejected? How to Fix It

How Long Does It Actually Take to Claim 60 PDUs?

What PMI Asks for in a CCR Audit, and What to Keep

How many PDUs do I still need?

PMP Renewal PDU Tracker – Free Excel Tool to Log Your 60 PDUs

Choosing your PDUs

Which PDU pack do I need to renew my PMI certification?

Which PDU bundle should I buy?

How do I renew my PMP?

Should I Get My PDUs Free or Pay for Them?

How Many PDUs Can I Really Claim for Free?

How Many PDUs Do I Need to Renew My PgMP?

How Many PDUs to Renew PMI-ACP?

How Many PDUs Do I Need to Renew My CAPM?

How Many PDUs Do I Need to Renew My PMI-RMP?

You know the rules. Now close the gap.

Pick your certification and get PDUs that arrive with a claim code CCRS accepts the same day.

Renew my certification