ACCA Strategic Professional · exam guide

ACCA Strategic Professional Rules and Regulations

Checked against ACCA's official pages, as of 12 October 2026. Rules and fees change; confirm on the official site before you act.

Strategic Professional has a seven-year completion limit, and ACCA membership also needs the ethics module and three years of practical experience.

• Seven-year rule: pass all Strategic Professional exams within seven years of your first Strategic Professional pass, or older passes lapse. ACCA confirms the rule is unchanged in the redesign.
• Ethics and Professional Skills Module: an online module of about 15 hours that ACCA recommends before Strategic Professional; it is required for membership under the current qualification. ACCA plans to replace it with an Essential Employability Module after the transition.
• Practical Experience Requirement (PER): at least 36 months of relevant work experience signed off by a practical experience supervisor, plus nine performance objectives (all five Essentials and any four of 17 Technical objectives). ACCA says there will be no changes to PER in 2027.
• Maximum four exams per exam cycle and eight different exams in a calendar year.
• Variants: ATX is offered in country variants; ATX-UK for June 2026 to June 2027 examines Finance Act 2025. SBR and AAA are offered in International and other variants.
• Transition: June 2027 is the final sitting of the current exams; the redesigned Strategic Professional exams are first sat in September 2027, with credit given for passed exams.