AWS retires DVA-C02 developer exam on 30 November as DVA-C03 takes over in December

AWS is retiring the current version of its Certified Developer – Associate exam. According to a post on dev.to by Sajeev Sebastian, the last day to sit the DVA-C02 exam is 30 November 2026, and its replacement, DVA-C03, begins on 1 December 2026. Registration for the new exam, along with the full exam guide, opens on 27 October 2026.

The dates that matter

Event	Date
DVA-C03 registration opens	27 October 2026
Full DVA-C03 exam guide published	27 October 2026
Last day to take DVA-C02	30 November 2026
First DVA-C03 exams	1 December 2026

The post also notes that AWS has said DVA-C03 will be available in all languages the current exam supports.

What DVA-C02 looks like today

Anyone booking now sits DVA-C02: 65 questions in 130 minutes, of which 50 are scored and 15 are unscored pretest items that cannot be told apart from the real ones. Question formats are multiple choice and multiple response, with no penalty for guessing. The pass mark is 720 on a scaled range of 100 to 1,000, the fee is USD 150, and the credential is valid for three years. AWS recommends at least one year of hands-on experience developing and maintaining applications on its platform before attempting it.

The current domain weights are Development with AWS Services at 32 percent, Security at 26 percent, Deployment at 24 percent, and Troubleshooting and Optimization at 18 percent. The guide already lists emerging topics on AI-assisted development and AI security, but on DVA-C02 those appear only as unscored pretest questions.

What changes in DVA-C03

The post, citing an AWS announcement from September 2026, says the core development skills carry over while existing tasks have been refreshed to match current practice. The main additions are:

• A new AI security task covering five skills, including access management for AI services and data privacy controls
• AI-assisted development woven through every domain rather than isolated in one
• Container management across Amazon ECR, Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS and AWS Fargate
• New services entering scope: Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, Amazon Q, Kiro, Amazon Data Firehose and AWS PrivateLink
• Merged skill areas, including DynamoDB and security topics folded together

Just as telling is what AWS has ruled out of scope for DVA-C03: prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation design, AI model selection, Amazon SageMaker AI and designing AI governance frameworks. The post's reading is that this remains a developer exam with AI-aware content, not an AI specialist certification.

What is still unknown

AWS has not yet published DVA-C03 domain weights, question count, exam duration or price. All of that is expected with the full exam guide on 27 October 2026, and the post advises treating any DVA-C03 percentages circulating before then with skepticism.

Which exam should you take

The post sketches three scenarios. If you can be ready by the end of November, take DVA-C02: its guide is final, study material is mature, and AWS says a credential earned on DVA-C02 remains active until its normal expiry date. If you are just starting, plan for DVA-C03 instead, since Lambda, DynamoDB, IAM, deployment and troubleshooting still matter and you can add containers and AI security once the full guide lands. Either way, do not schedule close to the deadline; booking with margin means a reschedule will not push you past 30 November. Before booking, confirm details on AWS's official Developer – Associate page.

Why it matters

A fixed retirement date forces a decision for anyone mid-preparation, and the practical differences are real: DVA-C02 has a settled body of practice material, while DVA-C03 study resources will take time to catch up after the guide arrives. The content shift is also a signal. By adding AI security, AI-assisted development and services like Bedrock and Kiro to a generalist developer exam, while explicitly excluding prompt engineering and model selection, AWS is defining AI fluency as part of ordinary AWS development work rather than a separate specialty. For teams hiring or planning training budgets, that baseline just moved.