CFA Level I 2027 curriculum changes: what is new and what was cut

8 October 2026 · 5 min read · Charta Learning

If you started on the 2026 curriculum and are sitting Level I in 2027, or you bought 2026 notes second-hand, the question is simple: what do I need to add, and what can I stop worrying about? This guide sets out the changes between the 2026 and 2027 Level I curricula, outcome by outcome, as we mapped them from CFA Institute's 2027 topic outlines. It is a map, not the curriculum: read the official material for the wording that will be examined.

The short version

• 87 new learning outcomes in the 2027 curriculum, mostly new material within existing topics rather than new topics.
• 29 outcomes from 2026 are gone, and some of the old reading's material moved into other topics.
• Three topics are renamed: Corporate Issuers is now Corporate Finance, Derivatives is Derivatives and Risk Management, and Portfolio Management is Portfolio Construction.
• Ethics follows the 12th edition of the Standards of Practice Handbook. Standard VI(A) is reworded as Avoid or Disclose Conflicts.
• The Quantitative Methods prerequisite reading is retired for 2027 onwards, because the revised Quantitative Methods material makes it redundant.
• The exam format is not what changes here. For how Level I is examined, see how to study for Level I.

Topic weights for 2027

The published ranges for the 2027 Level I exam:

• Ethical and Professional Standards: 10-15%
• Quantitative Methods: 11-14%
• Financial Statement Analysis: 11-14%
• Equity Investments: 11-14%
• Fixed Income: 11-14%
• Portfolio Construction: 8-12%
• Economics: 6-9%
• Corporate Finance: 6-9%
• Derivatives and Risk Management: 6-9%
• Alternative Investments: 6-9%

Spend hours in proportion to these, then adjust for where you are weak. The study-plan calculator does the split for you.

What CFA Institute says about the three big rewrites

CFA Institute's own summary of the 2027 changes singles out three areas:

• Quantitative Methods is now organised around real-world applications, with more Q&A, knowledge checks and worked examples. Estimation and simulation are expanded, with step-by-step guidance on historical simulation, bootstrapping and Monte Carlo using Excel and Google Sheets functions. Portfolio optimization is expanded and aligned with the Level I/II Python Fundamentals practical skills module. A new reading introduces financial data science, AI and large language models. CFA Institute is also adding Equation Explorers, interactive lessons in its own Level I online learning that accompany the Time Value of Money lessons.
• Equities is rebuilt around practical application. Valuation is grounded in financial statement forecasting, with models that project revenue, margins, investment and financing separately, and scenario analysis weighted by probability is introduced as standard practice. Industry and company analysis get more space, with Porter's Five Forces and PESTLE tied to the valuation story, and there are new modules on analyst research reports (initiating coverage, sell-side against buy-side, activist short sellers) and on CAPM and multi-factor models for the cost of equity.
• Ethics is updated at all three levels to the Standards of Practice Handbook, 12th edition, with new guidance on each Standard. Each Standard is now its own module with targeted practice problems.

What was dropped

Material that is no longer in the 2027 outline. If you studied it for 2026, you can set it aside.

• Quantitative Methods: money market yields (now in Fixed Income), counting rules, and scenario and sensitivity analysis.
• Economics: demand and supply analysis, elasticity, consumer and producer surplus, aggregate demand and supply, sources of economic growth, and the balance of payments.
• Corporate Finance: marginal cost of capital and break points, operating and financial leverage, the degree of total leverage, and operating breakeven.
• Equity Investments: order types and order instructions, functions of the financial system, classification of assets and markets, margin and leveraged positions, market efficiency, market anomalies and behavioural challenges to efficiency. Trading is now covered as exchange, off-exchange and over-the-counter trading.
• Fixed Income: term structure theories.
• Derivatives: option price bounds.
• Ethics: GIPS, which is tested only at Level III from 2027.

What is new

New outcomes sit inside modules you will recognise, plus a few new modules. The main additions:

• Quantitative Methods: a financial data science module covering deep, supervised and unsupervised learning, and how large language models are trained, used and where they fall short. Also required returns and risk premiums, price-weighted, market-cap-weighted and equal-weighted indexes, cash flow additivity and implied forward rates, the coefficient of variation and semi-deviation, historical simulation against Monte Carlo and bootstrap, the minimum-variance mix of two assets, and alpha and beta from a regression.
• Economics: geopolitics and globalisation, the role of the IMF, WTO and World Bank, economic unions and trading blocs, oligopoly and monopolistic competition, real against nominal exchange rates, capital flow restrictions, cross-rates and forward rates from interest rates.
• Corporate Finance: the Modigliani-Miller propositions, target and optimal capital structure, return on invested capital, public against private issuers, and the cash conversion cycle.
• Financial Statement Analysis: goodwill, share-based compensation, lessor accounting, effective against statutory and cash tax rates, and a new introduction to financial statement modelling.
• Equity Investments: a much larger valuation block: share classes and voting, equity issuance and trading, sources of equity returns, an introduction to valuation models, DCF and growth models, relative valuation, forecasting, industry and company analysis, analyst research reports, and factor-based models.
• Fixed Income: PVBP, covered bonds, collateralised debt obligations, repurchase agreements, short-term corporate financing, and the issuers and market segments of government and corporate bonds.
• Derivatives: credit derivatives, how a forward rate is fixed, why forward and futures prices differ, and the difference between a swap's value and its price.
• Portfolio and Alternatives: performance measures (Jensen's alpha, M-squared, Treynor and Sharpe), asset-class history, pension plans, mutual funds, risk tolerance against risk capacity, ESG in portfolio construction, natural resources, and digital asset vehicles.
• Ethics: ethics and trust in the investment profession, and how CFA Institute enforces the Code and Standards.

You can browse every 2027 outcome on the Level I syllabus, each with notes, formulas and a worked question.

What to do about it

1. Find out where you stand on the new material first. A free diagnostic shows which new areas are weakest, so you spend the time there.
2. Do not relearn what you know. Most outcomes carry over unchanged; the changes are concentrated in Equity Investments, Quantitative Methods, Economics and Fixed Income.
3. Check your question bank. Practice questions written for 2026 will test material that has gone and miss material that has arrived. Ours are mapped to 2027 outcomes.
4. Confirm your exam window and fees on the exam dates and exam fees pages.

Sources

• CFA Institute, The CFA Program: the structure of the program and its curriculum.
• CFA Institute, Curriculum Changes for 2027 CFA Program: the summary of updates to Quantitative Methods, Equities and Ethics quoted above.
• CFA Institute, Exam dates and fees: windows and deadlines.
• CFA Institute's 2027 Level I topic outlines and its summary of curriculum changes for 2027, which this mapping was built against.

Curricula change and this is our reading of them. Always check the current outline on the CFA Institute website before you plan your study around it.