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CME

When Is CME Due?

The MDProgress Team
Last updated August 20, 2026
6 min read
When Is CME Due?

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Your licence and your specialty certificate each carry their own CME deadline, and most physicians are answerable to at least two. Which comes first depends on which body set it. Few of them follow the calendar year.

Royal College MOC Program

The Royal College sets a five-year cycle. Most Fellows need 250 credits over that cycle, at least 25 each year. Section 3 requires at least 25 of those credits by cycle end. Section 3 credits must include one Feedback Received activity.

The annual deadline to report the previous year's activities is January 31. That date is a target, not a hard cutoff. Missing January 31 does not close your cycle; you can still report past activities while it remains open.

Cycle start is not universal. Join other than on January 1 and the rest of that year is a bonus period. Your mandatory five-year cycle then begins on January 1. Not everyone is on the standard cycle: physicians on the Practice Ready Assessment (PRA) route have a one-year cycle, and Resident Affiliates a seven-year cycle or until first certification, whichever comes first.

The Royal College's pages state no formal penalty for missing the annual 25-credit minimum or the five-year 250-credit total. One outcome remains. Your Cycle Completion Certificate becomes available only after February 15 following the end of a cycle you completed in full.

CFPC Mainpro+

Enrolment in Mainpro+ places you in a five-year cycle running July 1 to June 30. The headline number is 250 credits, with at least 25 of any type each year. The composition matters too. At least 125 of those 250 must be Certified and/or Certified Assessment credits, and at least 10 of the 125 must be Certified Assessment credits specifically.

A six-week grace period follows June 30. After that, CFPC moves you to a two-year remedial cycle of 100 credits, suspends your CFPC Special Designations (CCFP and FCFP among them), and reports your non-compliance to provincial and territorial licensing bodies. Continued non-compliance risks loss of CFPC membership.

CFPC also has two useful exceptions. If you earn more credits than required, up to 40 surplus carry into your next five-year cycle. They cannot satisfy the annual 25-credit minimum, however. If illness, sabbatical, parental leave or caregiving keeps you out of practice for six months or longer, you may be eligible for a one-year cycle extension; ask the CFPC CPD Department.

US state licences

For American physicians, licence renewal sets its own CME deadline, independent of any specialty board. Each state sets its own renewal date. Your CME deadline tracks your licence expiry, not the calendar year.

Board Requirement Cycle
Texas Medical Board 48 hours every 24 months Your registration period, not the calendar year
Medical Board of California 50 hours per two-year cycle The two years before your licence expires
Florida Board of Medicine 40 hours: 38 general plus a 2-hour medical errors course, with further required courses for DEA registrants and every third cycle Licences expire January 31, even years (Group 1) or odd years (Group 2)
New York No set hour total, per the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB), August 2026 Content-specific courses still apply, such as infection control every four years

US licence renewal cycles vary widely by state. Each board sets its own calendar.

Texas has one wrinkle. Reporting happens during registration, but CME documentation is held in CE Broker, a third-party platform, not submitted with the application directly. Mandatory CE tracking for all Texas Medical Board licensees began September 1, 2026.

US specialty boards

The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) requires at least 100 MOC points every five years. MOC points are ABIM's own currency, earned through educational and quality improvement activities. ABIM also requires a knowledge assessment. No fixed date applies; the deadline is personal to your certification and appears in Physician Portal.

The American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) is mid-transition. Under its 3-Year Stage, still active for some diplomates, you need 150 CME credits and 50 certification points per stage. Points come from self-assessment and performance improvement work. Under the 5-Year Cycle, which ABFM says began January 1, 2025, the requirements are 200 CME credits and 60 certification points over five years, with at least half the CME from Division I activities. The 5-Year Cycle also introduces a new assessment format: 25 quarterly longitudinal-assessment questions spread across the cycle, or an optional one-day exam in year four.

The transition date matters. You move to the 5-Year Cycle in the year your next exam requirement is due, and never earlier than ten years after you last met it. Track your status in MyABFM Portfolio.

The American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) sets the overall framework but delegates cycle lengths, credit totals and deadlines to each member board. Your deadline is your board's, not ABMS's.

Where your dates live

For CFPC, go to the Cycle Progress section of your Mainpro+ dashboard. The Royal College's tracking portal is My MOC, accessed via the Member Portal. ABIM uses the Physician Portal, ABFM the MyABFM Portfolio. Florida's public licence lookup shows expiry dates. The Texas and California pages name no equivalent tool.

Start with the licence first. Your state board or provincial college can stop you practising before your certifying board acts. In Ontario, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) requires all registrants to report CPD to one of three approved bodies: the Royal College, the CFPC or the Medical Psychotherapy Association of Canada. CPSO does not run its own credit-counting cycle; it delegates the mechanics entirely to those bodies.

When three or four systems are tracking your CPD in parallel, keeping all the deadlines in one place matters. MD Progress is built for that.

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