Two AWS Certifications Retire This Month — Here's Exactly What Changes and When
Table of Contents
- The two dates that matter
- What SAP-C03 adds that SAP-C02 never tested
- What DVA-C03 adds, and what it deliberately leaves out
- What happens to your certification if you already have one
- The practical timeline, if you're prepping for either exam
- What we're not claiming
AWS doesn't retire certification exam versions quietly — it publishes exact cutoff dates months ahead, on its own Training and Certification blog. Two of those cutoffs land this month, and one of them is close enough that it's worth checking today rather than filing this away for later.
The two dates that matter
Per AWS's own September 1, 2026 announcement, AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional stops offering its current version, SAP-C02, on November 16, 2026. The replacement, SAP-C03, begins general availability the next day, November 17, with registration having opened back on October 27. AWS Certified Developer – Associate follows a similar pattern on a slightly longer runway: DVA-C02 stops being offered on November 30, 2026, with DVA-C03 beginning general availability December 1, registration likewise opened October 27. The schedule above is AWS's own stated plan as of its September announcement, so it's worth verifying directly on AWS's certification page before booking an exam slot.
What SAP-C03 adds that SAP-C02 never tested
The new Professional-level exam keeps the same format in broad strokes — 180 minutes, 75 questions, $300 USD, available in all currently supported languages — but the content list is a genuine update rather than a cosmetic refresh. AWS's own breakdown lists 11 new skills tied to generative AI and agentic AI, 7 cloud-native skills, 6 covering DevSecOps and observability, 3 in data and analytics, plus resilience engineering and, notably, post-quantum cryptography — specifically AWS KMS support for ML-DSA and ML-KEM, the newly standardized post-quantum signature and key-encapsulation algorithm families. AWS's post lists five domains for the exam without changing that count, though it doesn't publish exact domain-weight percentages for SAP-C03 the way it does for some other updated exams — so if you need the precise weighting, that's something to pull from AWS's own exam guide rather than from this summary.
What DVA-C03 adds, and what it deliberately leaves out
The Associate-level developer exam changes more structurally. It stays at 130 minutes and $150 USD, now with 65 questions (50 scored, 15 unscored) and a passing score of 720 out of 1,000. The headline addition is a new task statement, Task 2.3, specifically on AI security, carrying five of its own skills, plus AI-assisted development themes woven across every domain rather than isolated to one section. Newly in-scope services include Amazon Bedrock, Bedrock AgentCore, Amazon Q, Kiro, Amazon Data Firehose, and AWS PrivateLink, alongside expanded container management coverage across ECR, ECS, EKS, and Fargate. AWS also consolidated some older content — DynamoDB coverage went from four separate skills down to one, and Security collapsed from 13 skills spread across two tasks into seven skills under a single task. The four domains keep their original count, weighted as Development 30%, Security 26%, Testing and Deployment 22%, and Troubleshooting and Optimization 22%.
What's just as useful here is what AWS explicitly says stays out of scope: prompt engineering, RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) design, AI model selection, SageMaker AI, and AI governance framework design. That's a meaningful signal on its own — DVA-C03 isn't trying to become an AI/ML certification; it's adding the AI-adjacent skills a working developer actually needs to touch (security around AI services, using Bedrock and Q as building blocks) while deliberately leaving the deeper machine-learning design work to AWS's ML-focused certifications.
What happens to your certification if you already have one
If you already hold SAP-C02 or DVA-C02, AWS's own guidance is straightforward: your credential stays active through its original expiration date regardless of which exam version is currently being offered to new candidates. AWS's advice for anyone mid-preparation is similarly simple — if you're already exam-ready, sit the current version before its cutoff date; otherwise, plan around the newer version rather than cramming for a version that's about to disappear.
The practical timeline, if you're prepping for either exam
If you're preparing for the Solutions Architect – Professional exam specifically, the practical math is blunt: with SAP-C02's cutoff two days away as of this writing, that window has effectively closed for anyone who isn't already exam-ready today. For nearly everyone else reading this, the realistic path is preparing directly for SAP-C03 or DVA-C03 — which means working from study material that actually covers generative and agentic AI content, post-quantum cryptography, and the newer in-scope services, rather than an older guide built around a retiring blueprint. That's a real practical risk worth checking before you buy a course or a practice-test bundle: material written for SAP-C02 or DVA-C02 won't cover what the new versions actually test. If you're working through AWS training, confirming which exam version your course and practice material are built around is worth doing before you're deep into preparation, not after. Contact for course details: 8447712333.
What we're not claiming
The dates and details here rely on AWS's own September 1, 2026 blog announcement as the primary source, so it's worth confirming on AWS's certification page that SAP-C03 and DVA-C03 are bookable before registering for either exam. We're not claiming exact domain-weight percentages for SAP-C03, since AWS's own post didn't publish those figures for that particular exam the way it did for DVA-C03. And the list of DVA-C03's explicitly out-of-scope topics — prompt engineering, RAG design, AI model selection, SageMaker AI, AI governance — is what AWS itself named as excluded, not a claim that this is an exhaustive list of everything that changed between versions.
