How to prepare for ISTQB® CT-GenAI: a 4-week study plan based on the exam weights

You have decided to take the ISTQB® CT-GenAI certification (Testing with Generative AI). You have downloaded the 71-page syllabus v1.1, and the first practical question hits you straight away: where do you start, and how much time does each chapter deserve?

Most study plans you find online split the syllabus into equal slices. That is a mistake, because the chapters carry very different weights in the exam. This article gives you a 4-week plan to prepare for ISTQB CT-GenAI, plus a 2-week intensive variant, built from two numbers that ISTQB® publishes: the points each chapter is worth in the exam, and the training time the syllabus assigns to it. The calculation is shown in full, so you can adapt it to your own situation.

Before you start: two numbers that matter

How much each chapter weighs in the exam. The exam has 40 questions worth 46 points, in 60 minutes (75 minutes if the exam is not in your native language). You need 30 points to pass, which is 65%. K1 and K2 questions are worth 1 point; K3 (apply) questions are worth 2. The ISTQB® Exam Structure Tables v1.19 give the breakdown per chapter.

The syllabus training time. The syllabus requires a minimum of 13.6 hours of instruction for courses that follow it, split by chapter. That time reflects how much material and practice each chapter contains, especially the prompting exercises in chapter 2.

The two measures say different things. Points tell you what pays off in the exam. Training time tells you what takes time to understand. Our plan uses the average of both.

The calculation: how much time per chapter

Chapter	Points (of 46)	Share of points	Training time	Share of time	Study weight (average)	Of 16 h of study
1. Introduction to generative AI	7	15.2%	100 min	12.3%	13.7%	2 h
2. Prompt engineering	16	34.8%	365 min	44.8%	39.8%	6.5 h
3. Managing risks	11	23.9%	160 min	19.6%	21.8%	3.5 h
4. LLM-powered test infrastructure	5	10.9%	110 min	13.5%	12.2%	2 h
5. Deploying in test organizations	7	15.2%	80 min	9.8%	12.5%	2 h
Total	46		815 min			16 h

Sources: ISTQB®, Exam Structure Tables v1.19 (questions and points); CT-GenAI syllabus v1.1, section 0.10 (training times). Hours rounded to the nearest half hour.

Why 16 hours? It is slightly above the 13.6-hour minimum, which makes sense for self-study: nobody is guiding you, and you need time for real practice with an LLM. Add 4 hours of mock exams and review, and the total is 20 hours.

Three things stand out in the table:

• Chapter 2 is the core of the exam: 16 of 46 points, and 5 of the 6 K3 questions. It deserves almost 40% of your time.
• Chapter 5 gives the best return: 7 points for only 80 minutes of training. Its objectives are mostly K1 (remember), so a few active recall sessions often do the job.
• Chapter 4 is worth only 5 points. Do not spend your evenings on vector database internals: aim to understand the concepts (RAG, agents, fine-tuning, LLMOps), not to become an expert.

The 4-week plan (about 5 hours a week)

On day one, measure where you stand. If you already use generative AI daily, you may know part of chapter 1; if you have just finished the CTFL, it is probably the other way around. Then adjust the hours in the table chapter by chapter.

Week	Content	Time
1	All of chapter 1 (2 h). Chapter 2, section 2.1: the six-part prompt structure, prompting techniques, system and user prompts (3 h)	5 h
2	Chapter 2, sections 2.2 and 2.3: test analysis, test design, regression testing, test monitoring and control; metrics and prompt refinement (3.5 h). Start chapter 3: hallucinations, reasoning errors, biases (1.5 h)	5 h
3	Finish chapter 3: non-determinism, privacy and security, energy, regulations (2 h). All of chapter 4 (2 h). Start chapter 5 (1 h)	5 h
4	Finish chapter 5 (1 h). Mock exam 1 under real conditions, then a detailed review (2 h). Targeted review and mock exam 2 (2 h)	5 h

During weeks 1 to 3, open every session with 10 minutes of active recall on the previous sessions (see below). That is what turns reading into durable memory.

The 2-week intensive variant

It suits you if your CTFL is recent or if you already use prompting at work. The volume stays at 20 hours, compressed into about 1.5 hours a day, six days a week.

Week	Content	Time
1	Chapter 1 (2 h), all of chapter 2 (6.5 h), start chapter 3 (1.5 h)	10 h
2	Finish chapter 3 (2 h), chapters 4 and 5 (4 h), two mock exams with review (4 h)	10 h

The risk of going intensive: little time to come back to what you covered at the start. Compensate with two short active recall sessions a day.

The methods that make the difference

Practice prompting, do not just read about it

Chapter 2 includes hands-on objectives (HO): writing structured prompts, applying prompt chaining, few-shot prompting and meta prompting. These exercises are not examined as such, but the K3 questions ask you to apply exactly these skills to a scenario. Reading "few-shot prompting" in the syllabus is not enough: you need to have done it.

A simple exercise to repeat with several techniques:

Role: you are a test analyst on a meeting room booking application.
Context: user story US-41 allows bookings from 30 minutes to 4 hours,
in 15-minute steps, at most 30 days in advance.
Instruction: identify the test conditions, then apply boundary value
analysis to every numeric constraint.
Input data: user story US-41 above.
Constraints: do not invent any rule missing from the user story; list
ambiguous points separately.
Output format: table ID | Condition | Values tested | Expected result.

Then check the output yourself: are the boundary values right? Was a rule invented? You are revising chapters 2 and 3 at the same time. For the six-part structure, see our article on the structured prompt for testers.

Active recall instead of rereading

Rereading and highlighting feel productive, but they rank among the least effective techniques in the review by Dunlosky and colleagues (2013), which rates practice testing and distributed practice as the most useful. Roediger and Karpicke (2006) also showed that after two days or one week, students who had tested themselves remembered more than those who had restudied.

In practice:

• Close the syllabus and write down what you know about a section, then compare.
• Make flashcards for the keywords. The keywords listed at the top of each chapter are examinable, even when no learning objective mentions them.
• Explain out loud the difference between two close concepts: hallucination and reasoning error, RAG and fine-tuning, system prompt and user prompt.

You can ask an LLM to quiz you, on one condition: check its questions and answers against the syllabus. An LLM can invent a definition or use vocabulary that is not the syllabus's own, which is exactly what chapter 3 is about.

Mock exams, to train and to diagnose

ISTQB® publishes a sample exam (Sample Exam set A) with justified answers. Keep it for week 4 and take it under real conditions: 60 minutes, no notes. Do not take it three times in a row: on the second attempt, you are testing your memory of the answers, not your understanding. The document itself states that its questions cannot be used as-is in a real exam and that the difficulty may differ.

The review is what matters most. For each mistake, write down the cause (missing knowledge, misread question, vocabulary confusion, lack of time) and the learning objective involved. Your targeted review starts from that list. We go into this in our article on CT-GenAI exam questions.

Common mistakes

• Splitting time equally. Chapter 2 is worth three times as many points as chapter 4.
• Neglecting chapter 5 because it looks "organizational". It is worth 7 points, as much as chapter 1.
• Studying with tool or blog vocabulary. The exam uses the syllabus terms. For example, v1.1 replaced "Data exfiltration" with "Context Manipulation". Make sure your materials are current: see what changed in v1.1.
• Reading without practicing. Without prompting exercises, the chapter 2 K3 questions (2 points each) become very hard.
• Memorizing the sample exam. It is there to measure, not to learn answers from.
• Never practicing against the clock. 60 minutes for 40 questions is comfortable if you have done it before, and stressful if you have not.

What to remember for the CT-GenAI exam

• Chapter 2 first, in depth. LO 2.2.1 to 2.2.5 are all K3: apply generative AI to test analysis, to test design and implementation, to automated regression testing, to test monitoring and control, then select the right prompting technique for the context.
• Chapter 3: learn to recognize. LO 3.1.2 (K3) asks you to identify hallucinations, reasoning errors and biases in LLM output. Practice on real outputs.
• Chapter 5: memorize. Four of its seven questions are K1, for example LO 5.1.1 (risks of shadow AI) and LO 5.1.4 (adoption phases).
• The keywords of each chapter are examinable at K1 level.
• A question can draw on several syllabus sections: revise the links between chapters (a chapter 3 risk inside a chapter 2 prompting scenario, for example).

Full details of the format and scoring are in our CT-GenAI exam guide. If you prefer a path already split along these lines, with chapter notes and corrected prompting exercises, that is how our course is built.

FAQ

How long does it take to prepare for ISTQB CT-GenAI?

The syllabus sets a minimum of 13.6 hours of training. For self-study, plan around 20 hours including practice and mock exams, adjusted to your experience with generative AI and how fresh your CTFL knowledge is.

Should I revise the CTFL first?

The CTFL certificate is a prerequisite. You do not need to revise all of it, but go back over the concepts CT-GenAI builds on: the test process, test conditions, test techniques, risk-based prioritization, monitoring and control.

Which chapter should I start with?

Chapter 1: it is short and sets the vocabulary (tokenization, context window, types of LLM) used everywhere else. Then move to chapter 2 without waiting: that is where most points are.

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Before you block 20 hours in your calendar, start by measuring your weak spots: the free diagnostic takes 5 minutes and 10 questions, and gives you a result per chapter. Ten questions will not predict an exam result, but they show where to put your first hours.

Sources

• ISTQB®, CT-GenAI certification page: CTFL prerequisite, exam format, downloadable documents (syllabus, sample exam, Exam Structures and Rules v1.2, Exam Structure Tables v1.19).
• ISTQB®, Exam Structure Tables v1.19, 2026-08-19: CT-GenAI questions, points and K-levels per chapter.
• ISTQB®, Certified Tester Specialist Level Syllabus – Testing with Generative AI, v1.1, 2026-04-27, sections 0.5, 0.6 and 0.10.
• J. Dunlosky et al., Improving Students' Learning With Effective Learning Techniques, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2013: APS summary.
• H. L. Roediger, J. D. Karpicke, Test-Enhanced Learning: Taking Memory Tests Improves Long-Term Retention, Psychological Science, 17(3), 2006: record.