CT-GenAI syllabus v1.1: what changed (and what did not)

In April 2026, ISTQB® released version 1.1 of the "Certified Tester Testing with Generative AI" (CT-GenAI) syllabus. If you started revising on v1.0, do not panic: this is a minor update. A few points still deserve your attention.

What does not change

The structure stays the same: 5 examinable chapters, the same themes (generative AI basics, prompt engineering, risks, LLM-powered test infrastructure, adoption in organizations) and the same exam format — 40 questions, 60 minutes, 30 out of 46 points to pass. Your revision plan is still valid; the format is detailed in our CT-GenAI exam guide.

Changes that matter for the exam

"Context Manipulation" replaces "Data exfiltration"

This is the most visible change. In the attack vector table of section 3.2.2, "Data exfiltration" becomes "Context Manipulation".

The associated example describes requests designed to extract confidential training data, for instance by overloading the context window with very long prompts. The idea has not changed; the vocabulary has. And in the exam, the vocabulary of the current syllabus is what counts. Questions 24 and 25 of the sample exam were aligned with the new term.

Two learning objectives rephrased

• GenAI-2.2.4 now reads "Apply generative AI to test monitoring and control task".
• GenAI-3.1.2 changes from "Analyze" to "Identify" hallucinations, reasoning errors and biases in the syllabus matrix.

Content clarifications

• The description of the "Execution Success Rate" metric (section 2.3.1) was changed.
• The first bullet point on bias detection (section 3.1.2) was rewritten.
• A paragraph in section 4.1.3 introduces AI assistants with goal-driven, agent-based test automation (see our article on AI agents in software testing).

Minor changes

A fixed hands-on objective title (HO-1.1.4), "few-shot" replaced by "one-shot" in hands-on objective HO-2.1.2b, hands-on titles aligned with chapter tables of contents, added contributors and typo fixes.

What to do in practice

1. Download v1.1 in your exam language.
2. Replace "Data exfiltration" with "Context Manipulation" in your notes.
3. Reread sections 2.3.1, 3.1.2 and 4.1.3, the only ones whose content really moved.
4. Retake the v1.1 sample exam, especially questions 24 and 25.

Sources

• ISTQB®, CT-GenAI v1.1 Release Notes, 2026 — available on istqb.org.
• ISTQB®, Certified Tester Specialist Level Syllabus – Testing with Generative AI, v1.1, 2026-04-27.