Training, exams and certification
Training, exams and certification
Fifty-six questions and sub-questions worth seventy marks, two and a half hours, open book, and forty-two marks to pass. The number that matters is seventy, not fifty-six — questions here are not worth one mark each.
PRINCE2 Project Management Practitioner (Version 7) tests whether you can apply the method to a described project, rather than recall it.
| Questions | 56 questions and sub-questions, worth 70 marks in total |
|---|---|
| Duration | 150 minutes |
| Pass mark | 60% — 42 marks out of 70 |
| Materials | Open book |
| Prerequisites | PRINCE2 7 Foundation, or PRINCE2 6th or 5th edition (Foundation or Practitioner), or PMP, CAPM, IPMA levels A–D, APM PPQ or PMQ |
| Accredited training | Not required. Self-study is available |
| Languages | Fourteen — Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Slovak and Spanish |
| Renewal | Every three years, with 60 CPD points |
This is the detail candidates most often get wrong when they plan their time. There are fifty-six things to answer but seventy marks to win, because some questions carry sub-questions worth a mark each.
| What you answer | 56 questions and sub-questions |
|---|---|
| What you are scored on | 70 marks |
| What you need | 42 marks — 60% |
| What you can drop | 28 marks |
| Time per mark | About 2 minutes 8 seconds |
Plan against marks, not against questions. A block of sub-questions attached to one scenario can be worth five or six marks and deserves the time that implies; a single stand-alone question does not.
You may take the official manual in. Two and a half hours across seventy marks sounds generous, and it is — right up to the moment you start looking things up.
Practitioner questions describe a project and ask what PRINCE2 would have you do in it. The manual tells you what PRINCE2 says; it does not tell you which part of the scenario matters. That judgement is the exam, and it is not in the book.
A workable rule: know the manual well enough to open it at roughly the right page. If you are reading the contents list, you have already lost the time the open book was supposed to save you.
Foundation is the obvious prerequisite, but it is not the only one. PeopleCert accepts:
If you already hold one of those, Foundation is a choice rather than a step. Whether it is worth taking anyway depends on how recently you read a PRINCE2 manual — Version 7 changed enough that a 5th edition certificate is a licence to sit the exam, not evidence you are ready for it.
Work past papers as scenarios, not as questions. The skill being tested is reading a project description and spotting what PRINCE2 cares about in it.
Tab your manual. Seven principles, seven practices, seven processes, and the management products. Tabs turn a lookup from ninety seconds into fifteen.
Budget by marks. Two minutes a mark, twenty-eight marks of margin.
Forty-two out of seventy. The published figure is 60%.
Both. You answer 56 questions and sub-questions, and they are worth 70 marks between them.
No. Accredited training is not required; self-study is an option.
Yes, if you hold PRINCE2 6th or 5th edition, PMP, CAPM, an IPMA level, or APM PPQ or PMQ.
Fourteen: Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Slovak and Spanish.
The official PRINCE2 manual. It is an open-book paper.
Sources. Every figure on this page comes from PeopleCert’s own published certification pages, checked in September 2026.
The three official PeopleCert packages — Exam Bundle, eLearning and eLearning+ — are on sale here, from €697 excl. VAT, exam voucher always included.
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