A practical, up-to-date guide for 2026: find accepted courses, understand the rules, and choose the right online or live learning to keep your license current.
If you hold an architecture license, continuing education is not optional. Every year you are expected to keep learning, document it, and be ready to prove it. The tricky part is that there is no single rulebook. Architect continuing education is governed by two separate systems that often overlap but are not identical: your AIA membership requirements and your state licensing board requirements.
This guide explains how both systems work in 2026, what counts as an accepted course, how to tell online and live options apart, and how to find courses that keep you compliant in every state where you practice. It also flags what is new this year so your plan reflects the current rules, not last cycle's
The most common point of confusion is treating AIA membership and state licensure as the same thing. They are not.
Your AIA membership has its own continuing education requirement, set nationally and the same for every member regardless of where you live. Your state license has a separate requirement, set by your state board, and those rules differ from one jurisdiction to the next.
Keeping all of this straight, across membership rules and the boards in every state where you are licensed, is exactly the problem CEU Events was built to solve. Instead of cross-referencing each board's rules yourself, you can open the CEU Events state licensing boards and associations page, click the board or association you renew with, and see the in-person events, live webinars, and on-demand courses that already meet that organization's specific requirements. It is the first platform in the industry to review, recognize, and organize continuing education courses around each board's and association's requirements, so the matching work is done for you and you get a direct link to the courses that count for your state.
The two systems are also designed to fit together: courses approved through AIA/CES are commonly accepted as documentation by state boards, so a single well-chosen course often satisfies more than one obligation. But "commonly" is not "always," and the responsibility to meet each board's specific rules sits with you. That is why starting from your board's page, rather than a generic course list, saves time and prevents gaps.
For most architects, the AIA requirement is the baseline they track first.
AIA measures continuing education in Learning Units (LUs), where one hour of approved education equals one LU. Architect and International Associate members must complete 18 LUs every year, and at least 12 of those must be in Health, Safety, and Welfare (HSW) topics. The remaining six can be general LUs or additional HSW.
A few details worth knowing:
For many architects, treating 18 LUs with 12 HSW as the annual target is the simplest way to stay ahead of both AIA and most state deadlines at once.
Your license to practice is issued and renewed by your state board, which is one of the 55 U.S. licensing jurisdictions that make up NCARB's membership: the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and four territories (Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands). Each board sets its own continuing education rules, and the differences are significant.
State requirements vary in several ways:
Requirements also change over time. States add new mandates (ZNCD is a recent example), adjust hour counts, and revise cycles, so a plan that worked last renewal may not be complete this time. Rather than tracking every change yourself, you can let CEU Events do that work: the state licensing boards and associations page keeps each organization's courses indexed to its current requirements, so when you click your board you see options that already reflect those rules, special topics included.
If you are licensed in more than one state, you must satisfy the continuing education rules for every state where you intend to practice. The average actively practicing architect carries several licenses, so this adds up quickly, and a board-by-board view becomes essential rather than nice to have.
The authoritative way to confirm your requirements is the NCARB Licensing Requirements Tool, which lets you look up and compare rules by jurisdiction, plus your own state board for any board-specific detail. Always verify there before you complete courses or renew, since requirements can change between cycles.
A few developments make 2026 a good year to review your plan rather than assume last cycle's rules still apply.
The clearest change is in Maine, where a new law (LD 1393, enacted as Public Law 2025, chapter 318) takes effect July 1, 2026. Beginning then, licensed architects must complete continuing education in health, safety, and welfare every year as a condition of renewal, with a minimum of 12 HSW hours annually. The law also bars repeating the same course for credit within a renewal cycle and exempts architects who are retired from active practice. If you hold a Maine license, this is the year to build an annual HSW habit rather than a once-a-cycle scramble.
Maine is part of a wider pattern. As of 2026, roughly 45 states require mandatory continuing education for licensed architects, and boards keep layering targeted topics on top of general HSW hours. California's disability access and Zero Net Carbon Design requirements are one example. Others have added items such as professional ethics, building-code updates, or resilience topics like high-wind and natural-disaster design. The direction of travel is consistent: more HSW, more sustainability and resilience content, and a shift toward annual accountability rather than end-of-cycle catch-up.
Because these rules shift from year to year, the safest move is to confirm your board's current requirements before you register for anything. The CEU Events state licensing boards and associations page is kept current as boards revise their rules, so when you click your board the events and courses shown already reflect the latest requirements, including new 2026 mandates where they apply.
Before you register for anything, confirm it will actually count. The good news is you do not have to become an expert in provider registration to do this. On CEU Events, the recognition and credit details are already spelled out for you: the invitation, the course detail page, and the certificate of completion all show which boards and associations recognize the course and exactly what credit it carries.
So the practical test is simple. Look for your board's or association's name and logo on the course listing, then check the credit details shown alongside it: the credit type, the number of hours or units, whether it counts as HSW, and whether it satisfies any special topic your state requires, such as disability access or Zero Net Carbon Design. On CEU Events, courses are organized under the organizations whose requirements they meet, so a course that appears under your board has already been matched to that board's rules. You are confirming a label, not auditing a provider.
Those listed credit details span the full range of recognitions an architect or designer might need, from HSW credit to IDCEC credit for interior designers and board-specific acceptance. If a course does not clearly show which organizations recognize it or what credit it carries, treat that as a warning sign and move on.
A frequent question is whether online courses really count. They do. Boards and accrediting bodies recognize programs delivered live in person, live online (webinars and streamed sessions), and on demand at your own pace.
The format you choose comes down to how you prefer to learn and what your board allows.
Online and on-demand continuing education is the most flexible option. You can fit courses around project deadlines, learn at your own pace, and in many cases receive your certificate the moment you finish. For architects juggling deadlines across a portfolio of work, this is usually the most efficient way to close a credit gap.
Live learning, whether in person or live online, adds real-time interaction, the chance to ask questions, and networking value. Some local code or jurisdiction-specific content is also delivered primarily through live sessions.
Most architects use a mix of both. One caution: a small number of boards cap how many self-paced or online hours you can apply per cycle, or require a portion of interactive or live content. Confirm your state's stance before you build an all-online plan.
You are really checking three things, and a good course listing puts all of them in front of you:
If a course shows your organization, the right credits, and a certificate, it belongs in your plan. You do not need to verify provider registrations or decode approvals yourself; that work is already reflected in what the listing shows.
Earning the credits is only half the job. You also have to be able to prove it.
A good platform does most of this for you by reporting your credits and issuing a certificate of completion for each course, so the documentation exists the moment you finish. CEU Events, for example, reports to AIA by the next business day and delivers certificates automatically. Better still, you do not need to track or store anything yourself. CEU Events lets you export your certificates on demand at any time, filtered by date range or by organization, and bundled into a single file or delivered as separate files. When renewal or an audit comes around, you pull exactly the documentation you need in the format you need it, without having saved a thing along the way.
Boards typically verify compliance through random audits. At renewal you usually certify that you have met the requirement, and only a subset of licensees are asked to submit documentation. If you are selected, you will need organized records, and some boards require them combined into a single PDF arranged by completion date. A few states allow carryover of excess hours into the next cycle, with their own documentation rules, so check before assuming hours will roll forward.
A little planning early in the cycle prevents a deadline crunch later, and 2026's new mandates make that especially worthwhile.
Start by confirming your renewal cycle and due date, since these are tied to your individual license and are easy to misremember. Identify your gap: how many total hours and how many HSW hours you still need for each state where you are licensed. Then spread your courses across the cycle instead of cramming, prioritize HSW since that is where most architects fall short, and recheck any state-specific special-topic rules. Pulling up your board's page on CEU Events at the start of each cycle is the simplest way to confirm what is currently required before you register for anything.
The fastest path is to start from the organization you renew with. On the CEU Events state licensing boards and associations page, you click your board or association and get a curated list of in-person events, live webinars, and on-demand courses that meet that organization's requirements, including special topics like disability access and ZNCD where they apply. CEU Events is an AIA and IDCEC accredited platform serving more than 160,000 registered architecture and design professionals, with next business day AIA reporting and automated certificate delivery, so the courses you complete are documented and reported without extra steps on your end. Because the catalog is indexed to each board, you spend your time learning instead of cross-referencing rules.
Other sources exist too. Some accrediting bodies and registered providers offer their own course libraries, and manufacturer-sponsored courses are a common source of HSW content. Whatever source you use, the test is the same one above: does the course show the board or association you renew with, and do the listed credits match what you need.
Continuing education rules change, and they vary by license type, residency, and renewal cycle. Treat this guide as a planning starting point, not the final word. Before you complete courses or renew, confirm your current requirements through the NCARB Licensing Requirements Tool and your state licensing board.
Architect continuing education in 2026 comes down to three habits: know that AIA and your state board are separate systems, choose courses that are clearly accredited and correctly designated for the board you renew with, and keep clean records as you go. The simplest way to put all three into practice is to start from your board's page on CEU Events, where the events and courses are already indexed to your state's requirements. Do that, prioritize your HSW hours, and renewal becomes a formality instead of a fire drill. Professional development for architects is meant to keep your practice sharp and your projects safe, and the right courses let it do exactly that while keeping your license in good standing.