{"id":466,"date":"2026-09-04T21:53:56","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T21:53:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.practicetestsoftware.com\/blog\/?p=466"},"modified":"2026-09-04T21:55:36","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T21:55:36","slug":"oracle-certification-2026-program-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.practicetestsoftware.com\/blog\/oracle-certification-2026-program-changes\/","title":{"rendered":"Oracle’s 2026 Certification Overhaul: What Evergreen Naming and the New Multicloud Track Actually Change"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oracle still controls only about 4 percent of the worldwide cloud infrastructure market, against roughly 28 percent for AWS and 21 percent for Microsoft Azure, according to Synergy Research Group’s 2026 cloud market tracking<\/a>. What is easy to miss in that headline number is the growth rate sitting underneath it: Oracle’s cloud infrastructure business grew more than 50 percent in 2026, faster than any of the three larger providers. A vendor growing that quickly does not sit still on its certification program, and Oracle hasn’t. It quietly rebuilt the whole thing this year.<\/p>\n

If you have looked at Oracle’s certification catalog recently, you have probably noticed the mismatch: some exam codes still end in “-25,” some already end in “-26,” and some no longer carry a year at all. That is not a website glitch. It reflects a real, three-part restructuring that happened across 2026, and it changes what you should actually register for right now, not just what changed on paper.<\/p>\n

What Oracle Actually Changed in Its Certification Program This Year<\/h2>\n

Three separate changes landed close together, and most coverage online treats them as one story when they are really three.<\/p>\n

Certification Names No Longer Carry a Year<\/h3>\n

Starting with the 2026 release cycle, Oracle dropped the calendar year from certification titles and digital badges. You now earn the “OCI Architect Associate,” not the “OCI 2026 Architect Associate.” Oracle frames this as an evergreen approach: the exam content and objectives still get refreshed on a regular cycle, but the credential name itself stops changing every year. Practically, this also means Oracle stops having to rebrand every single credential annually, which was becoming its own quiet maintenance burden as the catalog grew past 300 exams. Good for candidates who no longer end up with a badge that visibly reads as outdated a year after they earned it. Convenient for Oracle too, and there is nothing wrong with a change serving both sides at once.<\/p>\n

The Free Foundations Exams Got New Codes, and the Deadline Already Moved Once<\/h3>\n

Oracle’s three free entry-level credentials, OCI Foundations Associate, AI Foundations Associate, and Data Platform Foundations Associate, moved from “-25” exam codes to “-26” versions. The 2025-dated versions were originally set to retire on May 29, 2026. Oracle then pushed that cutoff back to June 22, 2026, giving candidates roughly another month before the older codes stopped counting. The 1Z0-1085-26 OCI Foundations Associate exam<\/a> is the live current version as of this writing. Worth flagging directly: this site’s own practice test listing for that exam<\/a> was still showing the older 1Z0-1085-25 code as of a mid-August 2026 update stamp, well after the June 22 cutover. If you are studying from any source right now, confirm the exam code on Oracle’s own product page before you buy or schedule anything, because the version churn this year has been genuinely confusing even for people paying close attention.<\/p>\n

The Architect Associate Course Is Free Now Too<\/h3>\n

Foundations-level training was already free. The bigger shift is that the OCI Architect Associate course and certification, previously a paid step up from the foundations tier, is now free as well. That closes a real gap in the free path. Before this change, someone could get through the entry-level foundations certificate at no cost and then hit a paywall the moment they wanted the next credential up. Now the free path runs one tier deeper before you have to pay for anything.<\/p>\n

Worth being just as clear about what did not change in all of this:<\/p>\n