24 Salesforce Certifications Are Retiring — and 16 Are Getting Agentforce Names. Your Deadline Is July 24.

Salesforce just announced the biggest credential shake-up in years: 24 certifications retire on February 1, 2027, and 16 more get renamed — most of them with "Agentforce" in the title — effective July 24, 2026. If one of the retiring exams is on your roadmap, you have weeks, not months, to act.

The dates that actually matter

• July 24, 2026 — last day to register for any retiring exam. Also the day the 16 renames take effect.
• August 31, 2026 — last day to sit a retiring exam.
• February 1, 2027 — the 24 certifications formally retire from the catalog.

One more structural change underneath all of this: certification activity has moved into Trailhead Academy, with exams delivered through Pearson VUE once the transition completes. If you haven't logged into your certification account since the move, do it now — before a deadline forces you to discover a migration issue the hard way.

What's being retired

The retirement list is heavy on Accredited Professional credentials and overlapping specialist tracks. The names that will sting the most for partners and consultants:

• B2B Solution Architect and B2C Commerce Architect — two of the most senior role-based credentials in the catalog
• CPQ Administrator and Industries CPQ Developer — consistent with Salesforce steering everyone toward Revenue Cloud
• Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) Consultant
• Education Cloud Consultant and Nonprofit Success Pack Consultant
• MuleSoft Catalyst Consultant and MuleSoft Hyperautomation Developer
• A long tail of Accredited Professionals: Process Automation, Order Management (Admin and Developer), Loyalty Management, Net Zero Cloud, Media Cloud, Energy & Utilities, Heroku Developer, Contact Center, Advanced Field Service, and several Marketing Cloud specialisms

A retired certification is still a valid certification. Retirement means Salesforce stops maintaining the exam — it does not invalidate what you earned or what you know.

That distinction matters for hiring managers as much as for credential holders. A B2B Solution Architect cert earned in 2025 still signals exactly what it signaled before. What changes is that nobody new can earn it after August 31 — which, if anything, makes existing holders scarcer.

What's being renamed — hello, Agentforce everything

The renames are the more strategically interesting half. Effective July 24, the consultant track gets rebranded around Agentforce:

• Sales Cloud Consultant → Agentforce Sales Consultant
• Service Cloud Consultant → Agentforce Service Consultant
• Field Service Consultant → Agentforce Field Service and Operations Consultant
• Nonprofit Cloud Consultant → Agentforce Nonprofit Consultant
• Revenue Cloud Consultant → Revenue Management Consultant
• Marketing Cloud Email Specialist → Marketing Cloud Engagement Specialist

Industry Accredited Professionals follow the same pattern — Health Cloud, Financial Services, Manufacturing, Consumer Goods, Communications and Public Sector all pick up Agentforce branding. Salesforce has confirmed the renames don't change exam content or annual maintenance requirements. Your existing credential carries forward under the new name automatically.

What you should actually do

If you hold a retiring certification

Nothing expires on you. Keep it on your résumé and LinkedIn — and consider noting "credential retired by Salesforce in 2027; awarded under full exam program" if a recruiter asks. Map where that skill lives in the new catalog so your next maintenance cycle targets the right successor.

If a retiring exam is on your 2026 plan

Decide this month. Registration closes July 24 and seats near deadlines fill up. If the knowledge genuinely maps to your work — say, CPQ Administrator for a team running CPQ in production for years to come — earning it before the window closes is still worth it. If you were chasing it as a market signal, redirect the effort to the renamed Agentforce-track equivalent instead.

If you manage a team or a partner practice

Audit your bench now. Partner program requirements and client RFPs reference credential names — when "Sales Cloud Consultant" becomes "Agentforce Sales Consultant" on July 24, your proposal templates, SOW boilerplate and team bios all go stale on the same day. It's a one-hour fix if you do it deliberately and a credibility leak if a prospect spots it first.

The bigger signal

Read the rename list again and the strategy is unambiguous: Salesforce is making Agentforce the default lens for every role on the platform. The consultant who configures Service Cloud is now, by title, an Agentforce consultant. That matches what we see in real orgs — the AI layer is no longer an add-on; it's the assumption. Credentials follow product strategy, and product strategy says the agentic era isn't coming. It's the catalog now.