1.2 Official Source Control and 2026 Curriculum

Source control before study volume

CFA preparation attracts a flood of summaries, tutor notes, forum claims, and old pass-score rumors. Some help with learning; none should control facts. The source of record is CFA Institute itself: the Level I exam page, the curriculum overview, the 2026 topic outlines, the CFA Program policies, the identification policy, and the official results releases. Third-party providers (Schweser, AnalystPrep, 300Hours, soleadea) are useful for drilling, but when they conflict with CFA Institute, the official source wins.

Source control matters because program details change. Fees rose for the February 2026 window, the separate one-time enrollment fee was eliminated, and policy language is revised periodically. A candidate who records the source and the date checked can update cleanly; a candidate who blends 2023 notes with 2026 reality may register for the wrong window or chase an obsolete rule.

The 2026 Level I curriculum map

The 2026 curriculum is organized into ten topic areas, each broken into modules (the term that replaced the older 'readings'):

• Ethical and Professional Standards — the Code of Ethics and the seven Standards of Professional Conduct, plus the Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS) overview.
• Quantitative Methods — rates and returns, time value of money, statistics, probability, sampling and estimation, hypothesis testing, simple linear regression, and an introduction to big data and machine learning concepts.
• Economics — supply and demand, market structures, business cycles, monetary and fiscal policy, international trade, capital flows, and exchange-rate determination.
• Financial Statement Analysis (FSA) — the reporting framework, income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement, inventories, long-lived assets, income taxes, non-current liabilities, ratio analysis, and financial-reporting quality.
• Corporate Issuers — corporate governance, stakeholder management, capital structure, the cost of capital (WACC), capital investments, and business models.
• Equity Investments — market organization, security indexes, market efficiency, equity types, and industry/company analysis and valuation (dividend discount and multiples).
• Fixed Income — bond features, issuance, cash-flow structures, pricing, yield measures, duration, convexity, and credit risk.
• Derivatives — forwards, futures, swaps, options, payoff diagrams, and arbitrage/no-arbitrage pricing intuition.
• Alternative Investments — real estate, private equity, private debt, hedge funds, commodities, and infrastructure, with fees and diversification roles.
• Portfolio Management — risk and return, the portfolio approach, modern portfolio theory, the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), and the investment policy statement.

MPS discipline

The Minimum Passing Score (MPS) is set by the CFA Institute Board, informed by a standard-setting (Angoff) process, and is never published as a raw percentage. The widely repeated claim that '70% passes Level I' is not source-controlled and can distort study behavior by inventing a false threshold. The MPS can also differ slightly between forms because of equating. Build margin instead: aim for consistent performance above 70% on official mocks across all topics, repair weak areas with an error log, and treat mock scores as diagnostics, not guarantees.

Source-control workflow

Keep a notes page titled Official Facts, with three columns: source, date checked, fact. Maintain a separate page for tutor tips and provider explanations. When a third-party claim conflicts with CFA Institute, correct or discard it — never let unofficial commentary become your authority. Re-verify logistics at 90 and 30 days out, because fees, windows, and policies are the facts most likely to have changed since you last looked.

Curriculum changes you cannot get from old notes

The Level I curriculum is revised annually, and recent cycles moved or renamed enough material that a friend's three-year-old notes are a liability. CFA Institute now organizes content into modules within the ten topic areas, hosted in the Learning Ecosystem (LES) rather than as printed-only volumes; the LES also houses your study planner, practice questions, and mock exams. Quantitative Methods has shifted toward machine learning and big data concepts and pared back some older statistics; Corporate Finance was renamed Corporate Issuers with a sharper governance and capital-allocation focus.

If your source predates these changes, you will study the wrong emphasis. Always pull the topic outline for your exam year, not a generic one.

A concrete source-control failure

A candidate reads a 2024 forum thread stating the program charges a one-time enrollment fee on top of registration, budgets for it, and is surprised when the 2026 checkout shows no enrollment line — because CFA Institute eliminated that fee for 2026. The reverse failure is worse: relying on an old fee figure and under-budgeting for the higher 2026 registration cost. Neither mistake is about intelligence; both come from trusting an undated secondary source. The fix is mechanical. Before any money or scheduling decision, open the CFA Institute dates-and-fees tool, read the figure, and write it on the Official Facts sheet with today's date.

When a number on that sheet is more than a few months old, treat it as unverified until you re-confirm it. This single discipline protects every downstream planning choice in the rest of this guide.