The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) has released detailed guidelines for CA Final students who wish to make their exhausted exemptions permanent for the upcoming January 2026 examination cycle.
According to ICAI, candidates who secured exemptions in the May 2024 examination, which remained valid till the September 2025 exam, can now convert those exemptions into permanent ones after the declaration of the September 2025 results.
The application window for availing this option will be open from November 3, 2025, to November 22, 2025, through the Self Service Portal (SSP) on the ICAI website. This is a one-time opportunity, and candidates who fail to exercise the option within this period will lose the exemption permanently.
The institute clarified that if a candidate holds exemptions in two papers of the same group, both papers must be made permanent together. Partial exemption retention will not be permitted. Once an exemption becomes permanent, the candidate will need to secure at least 50% marks in each of the remaining papers of that group to pass, as per Regulation 38D(8).
Additionally, ICAI announced that candidates who previously secured exemption in Paper 4 or Paper 5 of the Final Examination in May 2022, November 2022, May 2023, or November 2023, will automatically receive permanent exemption from the corresponding Self-Paced Online Modules (SET-A and SET-B)-no separate application is needed.
ICAI has also made it clear that once a Permanent Exemption (50PE) is granted in a group, no further exemption can be claimed for that group.
For clarifications, candidates can contact ICAI at final.exemption@icai.in or visit the official announcement page at www.icai.org/post/exam-jan-2026.
Official copy of the notification has been attached
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