The ICF PCC/MCC Credentialing Exam Is Changing – Here’s What Coaches Need to Know

 

Another ICF change is on the way.

This time it’s the PCC/MCC Credentialing Exam, with a new version launching on 10 November 2026.

If you’re working towards PCC or MCC, you might be wondering whether this means starting your exam preparation all over again.

It doesn’t but there are some important changes to understand.

 

What’s changing?

The current exam is based around coaching scenarios. You’re given a situation and asked to identify the best and worst response.

The new exam will have two types of questions.

There will still be situational judgement questions, where you’re being asked to work out what good coaching looks like in a particular situation.

But there will also be knowledge-based questions, which will test your understanding of the competencies, ethics and professional standards more directly.

So, broadly speaking, the exam will be asking two things:

What do you know?

and

Can you recognise what that looks like in practice?

ICF has said that the new exam isn’t intended to be harder than the current one and that the expected pass rate should remain consistent.

It’s the way your understanding is being assessed that is changing.

 

There is a transition period

This is particularly important if you’re already preparing for PCC or MCC.

The new exam becomes available on 10 November 2026.

Between then and 31 March 2027, candidates will be able to choose between the current Credentialing Exam and the new PCC/MCC Exam.

After 31 March, the current version disappears.

So don’t assume that because there’s a new exam coming, you need to abandon the preparation you’ve already done.

Depending on when you’re applying, you may have a choice.

Think about your own timescale, where you are with your preparation and which version makes most sense for you.

 

One thing I would check now

The new exam is based on the 2025 ICF Core Competencies and Code of Ethics.

If you’ve got exam preparation materials sitting in a folder somewhere that you’ve been meaning to get back to, check how old they are. There’s a lot of material around that was written for previous versions of the competencies and ethics.

And some of the changes are significant enough that simply practising lots of old questions isn’t necessarily going to prepare you well.

I also wouldn’t suggest trying to memorise pages and pages of ICF documentation because this isn’t just about learning some new wording.

 

The exam is really testing your judgement

This is the part I think can get lost when people start preparing for an ICF exam.

It’s tempting to look for rules.

If the client says this, choose that.

Or to learn little shortcuts for spotting the “ICF answer”.

You can know a competency,you can explain it and probably even say which competency a question is testing but you need to understand what the current standards mean when you’re actually coaching.

As an assessor and mentor coach, I’m much more interested in whether you can recognise what is happening in the coaching.

For example:

Who owns the agenda here?

Is the coach genuinely responding to the client or following their own thinking?

Have they become attached to an outcome?

Are they curious, or have they made an assumption?

Is the question creating space for the client’s thinking or subtly leading them?

Is the client still making the decisions?

And are there ethical or professional considerations that need to be recognised?

These are much more useful questions than trying to remember a rule about what coaches should or shouldn’t do.

Sometimes several possible responses can sound perfectly reasonable.

The difference is often quite subtle and that’s where understanding the competencies at a deeper level becomes important.

 

So how should you prepare?

Go back to the source material.

Make sure you’re working with the current ICF Core Competencies and Code of Ethics.

but don’t stop at reading them.

Take coaching situations and ask yourself what you’re noticing.

Look at possible responses and explore why one demonstrates stronger coaching than another.

And when you’re practising exam questions, don’t just check whether you got the answer right. When you get a practice question wrong, don’t just look at the correct answer and move on.

Work out why it’s the better answer and if you got it right, do the same thing.

That’s where the learning is because being able to explain why is a much better test of your understanding than getting a tick on a practice question. It’s developing your ability to think and discern like a coach.

The exam is changing.

What good coaching looks like isn’t.

And understanding that is still the best preparation I know.

Until next time,

Cath

x

P.S. There’s something else I think is really important here. Knowing the ICF competencies and being able to recite what they say isn’t the same as being able to recognise them in a real coaching situation — particularly when two possible responses both look reasonable. I’ve written a follow-up about exactly that: Why Knowing the ICF Competencies Isn’t Enough to Pass the Credentialing Exam. If you’re preparing for the exam, then you might want to look out for it.