Salesforce announced a huge certifications shake-up this week. As many as 24 are being fully retired on February 1 next year, while 16 are being renamed, effective July 24 this year.
Salesforce professionals might feel a sense of urgency about the retired certs because the final day to register for any of those exams is July 24, 2026. The final day to sit them is August 31, and after that, the window closes permanently. But beyond the immediate panic to make sure your certifications are still relevant, what does this move tell us about the future for Salesforce professionals?
Full List of Retired and Renamed Certifications
Here’s all the certifications that are being retired:
- Advanced Field Service Accredited Professional
- Salesforce Certified B2B Solution Architect
- Salesforce Certified B2C Commerce Architect
- Salesforce Certified Consumer Goods Cloud: Trade Promotion Management Accredited Professional
- Contact Center Accredited Professional
- Salesforce Certified CPQ Administrator
- CPQ and Billing Consultant Accredited Professional
- Salesforce Certified Industries CPQ Developer
- Salesforce Certified Education Cloud Consultant
- Energy and Utilities Cloud Accredited Professional
- Heroku Developer Accredited Professional
- Loyalty Management Accredited Professional
- Salesforce Certified Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Consultant
- Marketing Cloud Advanced Cross Channel Accredited Professional
- Marketing Cloud Intelligence Accredited Professional
- Marketing Cloud Personalization Accredited Professional
- Media Cloud Accredited Professional
- Salesforce Certified MuleSoft Catalyst Consultant
- Salesforce Certified Mulesoft Hyperautomation Developer
- Net Zero Cloud Accredited Professional
- Order Management Administrator Accredited Professional
- Order Management Developer Accredited Professional
- Process Automation Accredited Professional
- Salesforce Certified Nonprofit Success Pack Consultant
A Brighter Future For… You Guessed It
The renaming will largely be cosmetic, with content remaining unchanged, so you don’t need to retake anything. But it’s interesting to note that Salesforce appears to be aligning names with its current product portfolio – with Agentforce showing up a lot. This is unlikely to surprise anyone at this point.
The Sales Cloud Consultant, Sales Foundations, and Service Cloud Consultant certifications, for instance, all get an Agentforce addition to their titles. Indeed, Agentforce appears to be becoming the overall umbrella brand for core Salesforce work.
Core Salesforce offerings aren’t going anywhere, but the shift implies that the company wants certified professionals to prove that they can work in AI-agent-enabled versions of these products.
Industry credentials being renamed, rather than retired, is also somewhat revelatory. Communications, Consumer Goods, Financial Services, Health, Manufacturing, and Public Sector are being brought into the Agentforce naming umbrella.
Leaving aside the immediate news of the retirement and renaming of certifications for a moment, we can also say that fields like data, integration, and governance have a bright future by dint of this huge push for Agentforce. Salesforce regularly stresses the importance of high-quality data for having a functioning AI system.
Agentforce depends on business data, metadata, security, observability, and orchestration. An emphasis on Agentforce means an emphasis on these roles, too.
A Less Bright Future?
At a recent Salesforce community meetup – hosted after the news broke of the certifications being retired – someone won a voucher for a free cert. When asked what they would use it on, they said, “CPQ!”, and the room laughed.
Salesforce Certified CPQ Administrator, CPQ and Billing Consultant Accredited Professional, and Salesforce Certified Industries CPQ Developer are all being retired.
The legacy CPQ-only Salesforce professional might want to consider branching out; this move might suggest. While CPQ is not dead, the career path seems to be shifting.
The Heroku Developer Accredited Professional is also aligning with the platform’s recent end-of-enterprise-sales announcement, along with some other niche titles.
Salesforce Certified Nonprofit Success Pack Consultant is being retired, but, as we wrote earlier this year, the company is clearly positioning Agentforce Nonprofit as its primary innovation path.
It seems that, at this point, generic, standalone product specialists seem less future-proof, while those with cross-cloud, consulting, and (of course) AI skills may see a brighter path forward.
There is also a fair amount of pruning taking place here. Older, narrower, and overlapping product lines get tidied up, which is par for the course.
It’s plain at this point to say that AI integration is no longer optional. Or, at least, that’s the impression Salesforce wants to give off. Incorporating AI into Sales, Service, Health, etc implies that autonomous agents are coming for every workflow.
It is also arguable that traditional configuration skills are becoming commoditized, with the market now favoring professionals who not only understand standard cloud features but also how to deploy and optimize AI agents.
The Salesforce Certified B2B Solution Architect and Salesforce Certified B2C Commerce Architect certifications are also being retired. This suggests a simplification of the architect path, perhaps with the intent to generalize core platform expertise instead of certifying ultra-specific niches.
Final Thoughts: A Note of Optimism
A retired certification is still a valid certification. It will not be wiped from your Trailblazer profile, and employers can still look it up in the verification system. Retirement just means Salesforce will no longer maintain or update the exam; it will not erase the achievement. It’s just part of the certification lifecycle.
When Salesforce retires a certification, it is usually because the underlying product has changed so much that the old exam no longer tests what the market actually needs – or because a more recent credential has overtaken it.
Even if several of your certifications have been retired, you have not lost anything. You have still built up those skills and are just as much an experienced Salesforce professional as you were before. The average admin, architect, or consultant has not lost any skills, and this is not a death knell for you if you are affected.
For many people, this won’t change their work for some time. CPQ and NPSP continue to exist, and, perhaps somewhat counterintuitively, professionals who continue to specialize in areas that become less widespread may see their skills in even higher demand. Businesses do not simply cease using a service overnight just because a feature is being wound down, and by the same token, just because a certification for a certain skill is being retired, that doesn’t mean the demand is no longer there.
