What Is NMC Revalidation? The 2026 Guide

NMC revalidation is the three-yearly check that every nurse, midwife and nursing associate on the UK register completes to stay on the register. The Nursing and Midwifery Council brought it in for 2016 to replace post-registration education and practice (PREP), and the eight requirements have been stable since.

If you’re on the NMC register, revalidation isn’t optional. The deadline is the last day of the month your registration is up for renewal. You can see yours in your NMC Online account under “Revalidation application date”. Miss it, and your registration lapses on that date. From that day on you cannot work as a nurse, midwife or nursing associate in the UK.

The three-year cycle in one paragraph

Revalidation happens every three years from the date your registration expires. The evidence you submit covers the previous three years of practice. The gathering happens as you go (feedback after a shift, a reflective account after a difficult case, a CPD hour after a study day) and gets assembled into a single submission in the final eight weeks before your deadline. Nurses who leave everything to the last month often miss the deadline or scramble the paperwork.

The eight requirements at a glance

The NMC requires eight pieces of evidence:

1. 450 practice hours. For single registrants. Dual registrants (for example, nurse and midwife) need 900 hours. Triple registrants need 1,350.
2. 35 hours of CPD. At least 20 of those have to be participatory, meaning you learned with at least one other professional present, in person or online.
3. Five pieces of practice-related feedback. Written or verbal, from patients, families, colleagues, students, managers, or anyone whose feedback touched on your nursing work.
4. Five written reflective accounts. On the NMC Form 6, each one linked to a section of the Code, covering things you’ve learned and how your practice has changed.
5. One reflective discussion. A conversation with another NMC registrant covering all five reflective accounts.
6. A health and character self-declaration. Anything that might affect your fitness to practise.
7. A professional indemnity arrangement. Usually provided by your employer; if not, by a union (the RCN, Unison) or a private policy.
8. Confirmation. A third party, usually your line manager, or another senior NMC registrant if you don’t have one, signs to say the evidence is in order.

The binding specifications live in the NMC’s own revalidation guidance, linked at the foot of this page. Part 2 of this guide breaks each of the eight requirements down into two chapters each.

What revalidation is not

A few things revalidation isn’t, because the confusion costs nurses money and time.

It is not the annual NMC fee (currently £120). The fee is a separate payment due every year. Revalidation happens once every three years; the fee is paid every year, including the year you revalidate. Chapter 98 of this guide covers the annual fee in detail.

It is not a competency exam. There’s no test at the end. Revalidation is documented evidence that you’ve kept practising, kept learning, and kept reflecting. It is not a pass/fail assessment.

It is not the Test of Competence. The CBT and OSCE are for international nurses joining the UK register for the first time. Once you’re on the register, revalidation replaces them for the rest of your career. Part 6 of this guide covers the Test of Competence if that’s what you need.

It is not run by your employer. The NMC is your regulator. Employers can help you collect evidence but they cannot revalidate you. The submission goes from you directly to the NMC through your NMC Online account.

What the rest of this guide covers

The 100 chapters that follow are organised in eight parts:

• Part 1 (you’re reading it) explains what revalidation is and how the cycle works.
• Part 2 covers each of the eight requirements, two chapters per requirement.
• Part 3 walks through every section of the NMC Code, with practical examples and CPD mapping.
• Part 4 covers writing reflective accounts on the Form 6, including three full anonymised examples.
• Part 5 covers CPD strategy: what counts, what doesn’t, free sources, and the audit reality.
• Part 6 covers the Test of Competence (CBT and OSCE) for international nurses.
• Part 7 is a clinical reference: NEWS2, ABCDE, SBAR, drug calculations, hand hygiene, sepsis red flags.
• Part 8 is the practical playbook: finding a confirmer, the NMC Online submission, and the final 30-minute checklist.

If you only have ten minutes today, read Chapter 97 (the timeline) and Chapter 100 (the checklist). Come back to the detail when there’s time.

What to do this week

Three actions for the week you decide to take revalidation seriously:

1. Log in to NMC Online and write your exact deadline date somewhere you’ll see it daily: the back of your work diary, a phone calendar event, a fridge note. The date is the trigger for the rest of the timeline.
2. Open a new folder (on your phone or laptop) labelled “Revalidation [year]” and start dropping anything that might count as feedback or CPD into it. A thank-you card from a family. A photo of the certificate from a study day. A note about a complex case you handled. You’ll sort it later. The point is to stop the evidence disappearing.
3. Read the next chapter of this guide, on the three-year cycle, so you understand the rolling window the NMC is checking, before you start writing anything for the submission.

The next chapter explains how the three-year cycle works, including the rolling nature of the requirements. That rolling window is the part most first-time revalidators get wrong.