The PMBOK® Guide — Eighth Edition was released in November 2025, and the PMP exam has tested against it since July 9, 2026. It reorganizes the framework into 6 principles, 7 performance domains and 40 processes.
That last number is the one that surprises people. The seventh edition dropped the process structure altogether in favor of principles and domains; the eighth brings processes back, but as 40 rather than the 49 that the sixth edition defined. This page covers how the eighth edition is put together. For an item-by-item account of what became what, see the crosswalk.
The seven performance domains
Domains are the eighth edition’s primary organizing axis: every process belongs to exactly one of them.
| Performance domain | Processes |
|---|---|
| Governance | 9 |
| Scope | 6 |
| Schedule | 3 |
| Finance | 4 |
| Stakeholders | 7 |
| Resources | 5 |
| Risk | 6 |
Anyone who worked with the sixth edition will find these familiar, and that is not a coincidence — our analysis of the mapping found the seven domains line up closely with the ten knowledge areas they replaced, rather than being a fresh cut of the material.
The 40 processes
Of the 40, 20 keep their previous names and 20 are new, renamed or merged. The distribution across the project life cycle is heavily front-loaded: 19 of the 40 sit in planning, and exactly one in closing.
Three things worth knowing before you study it
Every ITTO list is formally open-ended. All 120 inputs, tools and outputs columns across the 40 processes end in “Etc.” The sixth-edition habit of memorizing closed ITTO sets does not carry over, because there are no closed sets left to memorize. All 120 of them, counted →
Procurement is no longer a process area. It moves to an appendix. Only the planning half survives inside the process set, under Governance.
AI is smaller in the guide than in the discussion around it. The eighth edition gives artificial intelligence its own appendix, but AI appears in the ITTO of only 2 of the 40 processes.
Where to go next
The process pages cover what each process does, what it was called before, and what actually changed. They are being written a few each week.
Browse the 40 PMBOK 8 processes →
See the full 49 → 40 crosswalk →
Print the 49 → 40 cheat sheet →
Process pages written so far
Each one covers what the process does, what it was called in the previous set, and what actually changed: