ISTQB® CT-GenAI certification: the complete guide

What is the CT-GenAI certification?

“Certified Tester Testing with Generative AI” (CT-GenAI) is a specialist module of the ISTQB® scheme. The first version of the syllabus was approved by the ISTQB® General Assembly in July 2025; version 1.1, a minor update, was released in April 2026.

The goal is not to turn you into a data scientist. The certification shows that you can use generative AI in your testing activities: understand what LLMs can and cannot do, write effective prompts for test tasks, manage the risks, know the tooling architectures and contribute to an adoption strategy in a team.

Who is it for?

The syllabus targets anyone using generative AI for testing: testers, test analysts, test automation engineers, test managers, user acceptance testers and software developers. It is also relevant for people who need a basic understanding of the topic: project managers, quality managers, business analysts, IT directors or consultants.

In practice, if you already use an AI assistant in your testing work and want to move from gut-feeling usage to a structured, defensible practice, this certification is for you.

The prerequisite: CTFL

The ISTQB® Foundation Level (CTFL) certificate must be obtained before taking the CT-GenAI exam. The syllabus also relies on the testing vocabulary of the ISTQB® glossary: test analysis, test design, test conditions, test monitoring and control… If these concepts are fuzzy, review them before tackling generative AI.

The 5 syllabus chapters, explained simply

The syllabus has 5 examinable chapters. Here is what you actually learn.

1. Generative AI basics for testing

Place generative AI relative to symbolic AI, classical machine learning and deep learning; understand tokens, the context window, instruction-tuned, reasoning and multimodal models; tell an AI chatbot apart from an LLM-powered testing application.

2. Prompt engineering for testing

The heaviest chapter. Build a structured prompt with six components, use prompt chaining, few-shot prompting and meta prompting, then apply them to test analysis, test design and implementation, automated regression testing and test monitoring and control. It also covers evaluating results and refining prompts iteratively.

3. Risks of generative AI in testing

Hallucinations, reasoning errors and biases: how to spot and mitigate them. Non-deterministic behavior, data privacy and security (Context Manipulation, data poisoning…), energy consumption, and the regulatory and standards landscape.

4. LLM-powered test infrastructure

The components of a tooled architecture, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), the role of agents, fine-tuning models for test tasks and LLMOps practices.

5. Deploying generative AI in a test organization

The risks of shadow AI, the building blocks of a strategy, choosing an LLM or SLM, adoption phases, skills to develop and how test processes evolve.

The CT-GenAI exam in short

The exam is a multiple-choice test with 40 questions in 60 minutes, scored out of 46 points; you need at least 30 points to pass. Questions are weighted by knowledge level, and chapter 2 alone carries the most points. All the details — scoring, question types, time management, common traps — are in our CT-GenAI exam guide.

How to prepare effectivelyComing soon

The syllabus states that candidates can prepare as part of a training course or independently. Either way, the method that works is the same:

1. Measure your starting point chapter by chapter instead of rereading everything in order.
2. Read syllabus v1.1 in your exam language and note each chapter's keywords: they are examinable.
3. Practice prompting on your own test tasks: write structured prompts, compare outputs, look for hallucinations.
4. Train in the real format: weighted questions, two-answer questions, time pressure.
5. Analyze your gaps and focus first on the chapters worth the most points.

This is exactly the approach of the QAcademy CT-GenAI course.

Reference resources

The syllabus, the sample exam and the exam rules are published free of charge by ISTQB® on istqb.org. Always download the current version: our content follows v1.1.

QAcademy materials do not replace these documents: they help you absorb them and practice.