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.
The exam itself: 180 questions, 240 minutes
PMI gives away the document that settles this. The Examination Content Outline is a free PDF, it was finalised on 23 June 2026, and it states the exam’s mechanics in plain numbers — in prose and again in a table. Several of the numbers now circulating in prep material are not the ones in that document.
Figure 1Every question on the 2026 exam, and five that aren’t
170 scored10 pretest (unscored)5 that do not exist
What actually changed on 9 July 2026
The exam did not get longer in questions — it got longer in minutes, and it doubled the number of items that do not count. The other real change is where the first break falls: it now comes after the case-study section, and once you start that break you cannot go back to those questions.
Table 1Exam mechanics, before and after
| Through 8 July 2026 | From 9 July 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Total questions | 180 | 180 |
| Scored questions | 175 | 170 |
| Pretest (unscored) | 5 | 10 |
| Time allowed | 230 minutes | 240 minutes |
| Breaks | 2 × 10 min | 2 × 10 min — the first after the case-study section |
| Tasks across the three domains | 35 | 26 — 8 People, 10 Process, 8 Business Environment |
The three domains kept their names and swapped their weight
This is the change that decides how you study. Business Environment was a rounding error on the old exam — eight questions in a hundred. It is now more than a quarter of the paper, and it absorbed almost exactly what People and Process gave up.
Figure 2Share of the exam, by domain
2021 outline2026 outline
Eligibility was rewritten too, and it is now four tiers
The old shorthand — “secondary diploma and five years, or a degree and three” — no longer describes the requirement. The 2026 outline sets out four paths and pins each one to a formal qualifications level rather than to a national degree name, which is what makes it work across countries. All of the experience must fall within the last ten years.
Figure 3Months of project leadership required, by education tier
One last number from the same document, because it decides what kind of question you are answering rather than how many: approximately 40% of items represent predictive approaches, and the remaining 60% are split between adaptive/agile and hybrid. That split is why the development approach and life cycle domain is worth reading before the exam rather than after it.
40 ← 49
Processes in the guide
26 ← 35
Tasks in the exam outline
26% ← 8%
Business Environment weight
Source. Project Management Institute, Project Management Professional (PMP)® Examination Content Outline — July 2026, document finalised 23 June 2026; exam mechanics at pp. 17–20, eligibility at pp. 13–16. Every figure in this section is taken from that document rather than from secondary coverage of it.
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: