The 2026 blueprint: what changed, and what older material cannot contain
Six domains, twenty testable competencies, and the added competencies that material written before 2025 cannot contain.
Published on September 10, 2026 · 3 min read
The blueprint of the Qualifying Examination is published by the PEBC. It says what the exam tests, and in what proportions. Since the May 2026 sitting, the edition in force rests on the pharmacist professional competencies revised at the end of 2024. For anyone preparing for Part I, it is the most useful document there is, and the most often ignored.
Six domains, twenty testable competencies
Part I — 200 multiple-choice questions, 4 h 30 — is weighted over six domains. The weights are those of Part I; Part II (the practical exam) has its own, and confusing them is a common preparation mistake.
| Domain | Part I |
|---|---|
| Providing care: clinical care | about 50% |
| Providing care: distribution | about 20% |
| Knowledge and expertise | about 11% |
| Communication and collaboration | about 4% |
| Leadership and stewardship | about 3% |
| Professionalism | about 12% |
Within these domains, twenty competencies are testable in Part I. The PEBC itself calls the weights approximate; the right reading is one of orders of magnitude: half of the exam is clinical care, a fifth is distribution, and an eighth — not nothing — is professionalism.
What was added
The revised framework enriched the blueprint with competencies that did not appear, or not in this form, in earlier editions. Among them, two belong to the Professionalism domain:
- Promoting equity, diversity and inclusion in the practice setting. Adapting care and counselling to language, culture, gender identity, a limitation; recognising one's own biases; ensuring equal access to the service. As an exam question, this rarely looks like a definition and almost always like a situation: a patient, an obstacle, four possible courses of action.
- Promoting a culture of patient safety and continuous quality improvement. Reporting incidents and near misses, analysing a medication error without looking for a culprit, improving a process rather than blaming a person. Again, a situation, and the expected conduct.
These competencies are recent in the blueprint; they are not recent in the profession. That is exactly why they trap: one believes them acquired, and has never worked them as questions.
Why older material does not contain them
A question corpus built before the framework was revised could not anticipate competencies that did not yet exist in this form. That is not the author's fault; it is a date. But for the person training, the consequence is the same: questions that cover the previous edition, and one domain — professionalism, about 12% of the exam — worked halfway.
Before buying or using any material, one simple question: which edition of the blueprint is it built on? If the answer is not "the 2026 edition", the coverage of the added competencies is yours to verify.
How to prepare for them
- Read the blueprint at the source. It is published by the PEBC, in French and in English. One hour of reading, and you know what the exam tests — something many candidates discover on the day.
- Do not file professionalism under "easy". Twelve percent of the exam plays out on situations where the right answer is a conduct, not a fact. These questions are worked like the others: by scenarios, with the explanation of every option.
- Measure your coverage. On RxSprint, every question is tied to one of the twenty competencies of the 2026 edition, to its weight and to a trap type; the competency table shows, for each, where you stand — including the ones that just came in. The starting diagnostic, in twenty-five minutes, gives the first reading.
- Check the edition every year. The official PDF carries a version number. We check it annually; do so too.