Alerts and Updates for CESGA — Certified ESG Analyst

Two facts here come from a single non-EFFAS source and are marked accordingly: the numeric pass rule and the four-sitting cadence are reported by 300Hours rather than stated on the EFFAS pages consulted. Everything on format, price, language and venue comes from EFFAS or EFFAS Academy directly.

CESGA is not an on-demand test: it runs to fixed common examination dates with registration deadlines roughly two to three months ahead of each sitting. Two sittings are bookable at once, so the practical decision in late September 2026 is December 2026 against June 2027.

The single thing candidates get wrong is treating CESGA as a multiple-choice knowledge test. Half the marks sit in one practical case study answered through nine open questions, and that half cannot be revised for by drilling question banks. The second common error is assuming the exam can be booked separately: EFFAS Academy states the training and certification must be purchased together, so the 250 euro examination right is not a standalone product.

The paper is two equally weighted sections inside 150 minutes: 20 multiple-choice questions and one company due-diligence case study with nine open questions. On the reported scoring, the exam is out of 120 points, 60 per section, and a pass needs more than 50 per cent overall plus at least 30 per cent in each section. That floor is what catches people out. A strong multiple-choice score cannot rescue a weak case study, because 30 per cent of 60 points has to come from the written answers regardless. Time budgeting follows from this: roughly half the clock belongs to the case study, and leaving it until the last forty minutes is how otherwise well-prepared candidates fail.

300Hours reports that negative marking applies to the multiple-choice section, so incorrect answers deduct points. Where a test has no penalty, answering everything is free. Here it is not. The rational approach is to answer where you can eliminate at least one or two options and to leave items alone where you genuinely have no basis for a choice, particularly on the regulatory and reporting-standard questions where near-identical acronyms invite a plausible wrong pick. Combined with the 30 per cent per-section floor, this argues for accuracy over coverage in the first half of the paper rather than a sweep-everything approach.

The headline figure on the EFFAS page is 1,500 euros for the online course plus certification. The EFFAS Academy breakdown puts the examination right at 250 euros excluding VAT, which implies the great majority of the outlay is the mandatory course, and the same page states the two must be bought together. A resit is a further 250 euros. Anyone comparing CESGA against other sustainable finance credentials on exam fee alone will misjudge it by a factor of six. The offsetting point is that the sources report no annual maintenance fee and no continuing-education charge once the designation is held.

Registration deadlines sit two to three months before the exam. December 2026 registration opened on 1 June 2026 and closes on 2 November 2026; June 2027 registration opened on 20 September 2026 and closes on 5 February 2027. That means the decision is made long before the study is finished, and missing a deadline costs a full quarter. The safe sequencing for someone starting now is to register for the June 2027 sitting, which leaves the whole of the reported 80 to 120 study hours inside a comfortable window, rather than gambling on the 2 November cut-off for December.

300Hours describes nine tested modules plus a tenth on regional developments that is not examined. Modules one to eight are reported as the multiple-choice base at roughly 5.55 per cent each, and module nine, the climate change application module, effectively carries the 50 per cent case study weight. The practical consequence is that reading time should not be spread evenly across the material. Module nine deserves disproportionate attention because it is where the open questions come from, and module ten can be read once for context rather than revised. Confirm this weighting against the current EFFAS Academy syllabus document, since it is a single-source report.