Cisco announced CCNA 200-301 version 2.0 on May 20, 2026. The new exam goes live February 3, 2027, and the last day to sit the current v1.1 exam is February 2, 2027. The exam code doesn’t change, the certification you earn doesn’t change, and the exam is still 120 minutes. What changes is what Cisco asks you to do with the knowledge.
If you’re studying right now, the short version is: finish. You have a runway, and it’s long enough. The longer version is worth reading, because the way you spend your last three months before the cutover should look different from the way you spend the next three.
When does CCNA v2.0 launch and when does v1.1 retire?
February 3, 2027 is the first day you can sit CCNA v2.0. February 2, 2027 is the last day you can sit v1.1. Cisco published the v2.0 exam topics on announcement day, which gives candidates roughly eight and a half months of warning, one of the longer runways Cisco has given for a blueprint change.
A few things people get wrong about this:
- The exam number stays 200-301. It has been 200-301 since 2020 and Cisco now increments the blueprint version underneath the number instead of retiring the code.
- There is no separate “v2.0 certification.” Pass either version and you hold a CCNA.
- Cisco calls this a major revision, which under its own versioning rules means more than 20 percent of the blueprint moved. This is not the light touch that v1.1 was in August 2024.
The pattern across every CCNA rewrite since 2020 is consistent. Fundamentals survive, packaging changes.
What changed in the CCNA v2.0 blueprint?
Cisco collapsed six domains into five and redistributed the weight toward switching, infrastructure, and security. Automation and Programmability disappears as a standalone domain and gets folded into a new operations section alongside AI.
| CCNA v1.1 (current, through Feb 2, 2027) | CCNA v2.0 (from Feb 3, 2027) |
|---|---|
| 1.0 Network Fundamentals (20%) | 1.0 Network Infrastructure and Connectivity (25%) |
| 2.0 Network Access (20%) | 2.0 Switching and Network Access (25%) |
| 3.0 IP Connectivity (25%) | 3.0 IP Routing (20%) |
| 4.0 IP Services (10%) | 4.0 Network Services and Security (20%) |
| 5.0 Security Fundamentals (15%) | 5.0 AI, Network Operations and Management (10%) |
| 6.0 Automation and Programmability (10%) | (no sixth domain) |
Infrastructure and switching now carry half the exam between them, up from 40 percent. Security climbs sharply once you count the Layer 2 protections that moved into domain 4. Routing drops five points, which surprised a lot of people, though OSPF didn’t get easier: v2.0 adds OSPFv3 for IPv6 next to OSPFv2, and HSRP and VRRP now have to be interpreted rather than described.
Why is troubleshooting the real story in CCNA v2.0?
Because the verbs changed. Wendell Odom counted the performance-level verbs in the new blueprint and found that roughly 28 percent of v2.0 exam topics now use “troubleshoot” or “diagnose.” In v1.0 and v1.1, the word troubleshoot appeared in exactly zero topic statements. That is a bigger shift than any single new subject Cisco added.
Watch what happens to topics that look unchanged on the surface:
| Topic | What v1.1 asks | What v2.0 asks |
|---|---|---|
| IPv4 and IPv6 addressing | Configure, verify, describe address types | Troubleshoot addressing, assignment, and subnetting |
| Static routes | Configure and verify | Troubleshoot default, network, host, and floating statics |
| DHCP | Client and relay | Client, server, and relay on IOS devices |
| Interface and cable problems | Identify errors, duplex, speed | Diagnose signal levels, pinout, distance, cable type |
| Routing table | Describe components | Interpret next hop using protocol, prefix, AD, and metric |
Same subject. Different skill. You can pass v1.1 having memorized what a floating static route is. On v2.0 you get handed one that isn’t working and asked why.
The practical consequence for anyone who ends up on the new exam: lab time stops being the thing you do after reading and becomes the thing you do while reading. Break the config on purpose, then read the output and find your own mistake. Video courses and flashcards teach recognition. Recognition doesn’t survive contact with a broken adjacency.
What topics did Cisco remove from the CCNA?
Quite a lot, and most of it is memorization. Cisco cut the theory that candidates could recite without being able to use, which is the fairest trade in the whole update.
- Network fundamentals theory: device role descriptions, topology architectures (two-tier, three-tier, spine-leaf), physical cabling comparisons, TCP versus UDP comparison, the detailed IPv6 address type list, and the MAC learning and flooding explanations.
- Most of wireless: Cisco wireless architectures and AP modes, WLC physical connections and LAG, WLAN GUI configuration, and the WPA/WPA2/WPA3 comparison. Wireless principles survive, and wireless client troubleshooting is actually expanded, but the WLC GUI clicking is gone.
- IP services: NTP configuration, the entire QoS per-hop behavior section, and TFTP and FTP (replaced by SFTP and SCP).
- Security theory: threats and vulnerabilities definitions, security program elements, password policy elements, and the authentication versus authorization versus accounting comparison.
- Automation theory: controller-based versus traditional networking, overlay and underlay and fabric, northbound and southbound APIs, REST and CRUD and HTTP verbs, JSON data structures, and Terraform.
That last bullet deserves a moment. The REST and JSON material that so many candidates panicked about is being retired at the associate level, though the reasoning behind putting it there in the first place still holds up (we covered why Cisco pushed programmability into the CCNA when it happened). Ansible survives. So do SNMP and syslog. Cisco kept the tools you touch and dropped the vocabulary you recite.
One warning that people are already getting wrong on Reddit: if you are testing on v1.1, none of this is removed for you. Every one of those topics is still fair game until February 2, 2027. The removal list only becomes a study filter once you know you’re sitting v2.0.
What is the new AI domain on the CCNA?
Domain 5.0, “AI, Network Operations and Management,” is worth 10 percent and it absorbs the old automation content plus two new AI topics. Cisco’s own exam description now says candidates may be asked to evaluate output and recommendations from agentic AI and digital network assistants during troubleshooting and operations tasks.
What you actually need to know:
- The difference between generative AI (produces text, config, summaries) and agentic AI (takes actions, runs commands, chains steps).
- How to select a prompt, with Cisco specifically calling out data classification, persona, instructions, and output format.
- Network management approaches: device-based, cloud-based, controller-based, automation-based, and infrastructure as code.
- SNMP, syslog severity levels and facilities, and Ansible for configuration management, all carried over from v1.1.
The skill Cisco is testing here isn’t prompt-writing. It’s whether you can look at an AI-generated recommendation and tell whether it’s wrong. An assistant that confidently tells you to shut down the wrong interface is a lot more dangerous than one that admits it doesn’t know, and the exam appears designed around exactly that judgment gap. This tracks with what Cisco told us when the first AI topic landed in v1.1, which we wrote up in our look at why AI showed up on the CCNA in the first place.
Ten percent, by the way, is about ten to twelve questions. Don’t rearrange your entire study plan around it.
Should you take the CCNA now or wait for v2.0?
If you can be exam-ready before February 2, 2027, sit v1.1. The credential is identical, it’s valid for three years from your pass date, and the study material for the current exam is mature while v2.0 material is still being written.
| Your situation | What to do |
|---|---|
| Already deep in v1.1 study, scoring well on practice exams | Book a date. Finish. Nothing about this announcement changes your plan. |
| Starting now, can commit steady hours through the fall | Target v1.1 with a hard deadline of mid-January 2027 for your first attempt. |
| Starting now, studying casually around a demanding job | Plan for v2.0. A rushed v1.1 attempt in January is worse than a prepared v2.0 attempt in spring. |
| Starting in the fall of 2026 or later | Study v2.0 from the start. Don’t learn a blueprint you’ll never test on. |
| Waiting because “the new one looks better on a resume” | It won’t. Hiring managers see “CCNA,” not a blueprint version. |
The one strategy that reliably fails is stalling. Candidates who paused their study in May to “see what happens with v2.0” have already burned two months of momentum on an exam that doesn’t exist yet. If you need a realistic sense of how long this takes, our breakdown of how many months CCNA study actually requires is the honest starting point for backing into a date.
When should you book your first attempt if you want v1.1?
Aim to take your first attempt no later than mid-January 2027, not the first week of February. This is the part almost nobody plans for, and it’s the part that will cost people their v1.1 window.
Work backwards. Cisco’s current retake policy makes you wait five calendar days after a failed attempt before you can test again. If you want room for a second try, and ideally a third, your first attempt needs to land around January 12, 2027, with everything wrapped by the end of that month. Testing centers lose power. Cars don’t start. Pearson VUE reschedules. Leave slack for the ordinary chaos, not just for a bad exam day. If the worst does happen, the recovery path is well worn, and we mapped it out in what actually happens after a CCNA failure.
There’s one tactical adjustment worth making inside your final three months. If you reach November 2026 and the finish looks tight, stop studying the topics v2.0 drops. NTP configuration, QoS per-hop behavior, WLC GUI work, REST and CRUD, Terraform. They’re still scored on v1.1, so you take a small hit on those questions. But if you end up rolling into v2.0, every hour spent on them is gone, and every hour you spend on Rapid PVST+ guards or DHCP troubleshooting carries forward.
Does a CCNA earned on v1.1 still count after February 2027?
Yes. Cisco certifications are valid for three years from the date you pass, regardless of which blueprint you tested on. Pass on the final day of v1.1 and your CCNA runs to February 2030. You renew through continuing education credits or by passing a qualifying exam before it expires, and nobody in a hiring process will ask you which blueprint version you took.
Your certificate says CCNA. That’s the whole product.
Quick answers
Is the CCNA exam code changing? No. It stays 200-301. Only the blueprint version increments, from v1.1 to v2.0.
Is CCNA v2.0 harder? Harder in a specific way. Less to memorize, more to fix. Roughly 28 percent of the exam topics now use troubleshoot or diagnose verbs, up from none.
Is the exam still 120 minutes? Yes.
Is BGP on the new CCNA? No. BGP left the CCNA in 2020 and does not return in v2.0.
Do I have to learn Python for v2.0? No. Python was never heavily tested, and the REST, CRUD, and JSON material is being removed. Ansible, SNMP, and syslog stay.
Where do I get the official topic list? Cisco publishes both blueprints on the Cisco Learning Network. Read the actual PDF before you buy any course claiming to be “v2.0 ready.”
Start with Cisco’s own documents rather than anyone’s summary of them, including this one. The official CCNA v2.0 exam topics and the current v1.1 exam topics sit side by side on the Cisco Learning Network, and reading them next to each other for twenty minutes will tell you more about your own gaps than any blog post. For the deepest analysis published so far, Wendell Odom’s blueprint deep dive counts the verb changes topic by topic, and Anthony Sequeira’s domain walkthrough is a clean read on what each new section expects.
Then pick your date and book it. The exam that gets scheduled is the exam that gets passed.
Senior Network Engineer | CCNP Enterprise | CCIE Candidate
Trave Hurd is a senior network engineer with over a decade of experience designing and managing enterprise Cisco environments. Holding multiple Cisco and industry certifications, he writes about the full arc of a networking career, from passing your first exam to building the skills that get you to the top of the field.
