# The Washington CPA renewal cycle — three cohorts, two dates

> Washington renews CPA licences every three years by 30 April, with 120 hours of continuing education due by 31 December of the year before. The 25,984 licences in practice, by cohort.

## The three-year renewal cycle

Two dates matter, and the one people remember is the later of the two.

### The date that gets filed, and the date that gets missed

**30 April** is the filing deadline: renewals go in between
1 January and 30 April of the licence's expiry year, and a late fee follows.
That date is well known.

**31 December of the year before** is the one that decides
whether you can file at all. By then the **120 hours** of
continuing education must be complete — with at least
**20 hours in each calendar year** of the three-year cycle, and a
Board-approved ethics course among them. The rule is at WAC 4-30-134.

The consequence is arithmetic rather than advice: someone who opens the
renewal form in February and starts looking for hours has already missed the
deadline that mattered, and is asking for an extension instead.

### The three cohorts

| Renews by 30 April | CPAs in practice | Share |
|---|---|---|
| [2027](/renewal/2027.md) | 8,765 | 33.7% |
| [2028](/renewal/2028.md) | 9,520 | 36.6% |
| [2029](/renewal/2029.md) | 7,699 | 29.6% |

They are close in size, which is what a three-year cycle looks like once it
has settled. It also means about a third of Washington’s 25,984
practising CPAs are in a renewal year at any time, and their hours were due
the December before.

### What a cohort is not

It is not a year group. Two people who qualified decades apart can sit in
the same cohort, because the cycle follows the licence rather than the career:
the oldest licence still in practice was first issued in
**1959**, and it renews alongside licences issued last
year.

It is not a queue either. Nothing moves between cohorts by waiting; a
licence stays in its three-year rhythm unless it lapses and is reinstated.

### Where each cohort is

Every cohort is spread across the whole state rather than concentrated
anywhere: 91 Washington towns have enough licence holders to get
a page of their own, and 3,874 licences in practice sit at an address
outside Washington altogether. A cohort page shows both splits.

And 9,578 licences in practice — 36.9%
— carry no state at all on the record, so they appear in a cohort
without appearing anywhere on the map.

### If you are the one renewing

Your cohort is on your own record: look up your licence number, or your
surname, in the search above and the year is shown against it. The two dates
follow from that year — hours by 31 December of the year before, filing
by 30 April.

This site is not the Board and nothing here moves a date or
files anything. What it gives you is the year, the arithmetic, and who else is
in the same position.

### A reminder before the December that counts

Leave your details and we will tell you when your cohort is coming up — in time for the hours, not just the filing — and pass your request for continuing-education hours to providers who teach for Washington.

We take no commission and we recommend no course provider. We have no arrangement with any provider today — we are collecting these requests in order to go and find them. [What we do with this](/privacy.md).

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Página: https://cpa-wa.pages.dev/renewal/
Fonte: Washington State Certified Public Accountants — Washington State Board of Accountancy
Recolha: 2026-08-21