Sports Medicine CAQ Exam Dates 2026: Testing Windows, Deadlines & Scheduling

Who Administers the Sports Medicine CAQ Exam

Before locking in a date, it's worth understanding exactly who is running this exam. The AOA Subspecialty Certification in Sports Medicine (CAQ) is administered by the American Osteopathic Conjoint Sports Medicine Examination Committee (AOCSMEC), operating within the AOA board certification structure. AOCSMEC - not the American Osteopathic Academy of Sports Medicine (AOASM) - is the body that sets the testing windows, eligibility rules, and passing standard. AOASM functions as a professional society and review-resource provider; it does not certify anyone or control exam scheduling. If you're cross-referencing scheduling information anywhere online, confirm it traces back to AOCSMEC and the official AOA certification pages, not a society's continuing-education calendar.

For a broader orientation to what this credential actually is and how it differs from similarly named certifications, see our overview of the Sports Medicine CAQ Certification and the plain-language explainer What Is Sports Medicine CAQ?.

The 2026 Testing Window: July 10-11

The 2026 AOA Subspecialty Sports Medicine CAQ examination is scheduled for July 10-11, 2026. Unlike testing programs that offer multiple windows throughout the year, this initial subspecialty/CAQ written exam is administered on a single annual date, so missing it means waiting for the next annual cycle. That makes calendar planning far more consequential than it would be for a program with rolling or quarterly testing.

The exam itself is a half-day format: 200 single-best-answer multiple-choice questions delivered in one online session. There is no separate oral component, no practical skills station, and no second-day continuation - everything happens within the July 10-11 window assigned to your registration.

Registration, Fees, and Deadlines

The standard 2026 examination fee is $1,100. This fee covers the initial subspecialty CAQ written examination itself; it is separate from any primary board certification maintenance fees you already pay to your osteopathic specialty board, and separate from the $100 annual assessment registration fee tied to the longitudinal OCC process after you're certified (more on that distinction below).

Because AOCSMEC runs a single July testing date, registration deadlines - application submission, document verification, program director attestation - all cluster well before the exam itself. Candidates should treat the months leading up to spring as the real deadline pressure point, not the exam date itself. Late or incomplete fellowship documentation is one of the most common reasons candidates get pushed to the following year's cycle, so program-director sign-off and completion paperwork need to be finalized early.

For a full breakdown of what this fee does and doesn't include relative to primary board costs, see Sports Medicine CAQ Certification Cost 2026: Complete Pricing Breakdown. And if you haven't yet confirmed you meet the underlying prerequisites, review Sports Medicine CAQ Requirements 2026: Eligibility, Prerequisites & How to Qualify before you register.

Remote Proctoring: MonitorEDU SecureBrowser

The 2026 examination is delivered online with remote proctoring rather than at a physical testing center. AOA's remote-exam preparation guidance specifies the use of MonitorEDU SecureBrowser for the session. Practically, this changes your pre-exam checklist compared with a traditional test-center exam:

• You need a private, quiet, well-lit space that meets remote-proctoring visibility requirements for the full half-day session.
• The SecureBrowser software must be installed, tested, and confirmed compatible with your machine well before July 10-11 - not the morning of.
• Reliable internet is a hard requirement; connectivity drops during a proctored session can create complications that a test-center environment simply doesn't have.
• Identification, workspace scanning, and browser lockdown procedures typically happen immediately before the session starts, so build in buffer time rather than logging in at the last minute.

Official specifications for remote-proctored exams are published at certification.osteopathic.org/remote-proctored-exams/ - confirm system requirements against your own hardware well ahead of the July window rather than relying on secondhand summaries.

Eligibility Timing: The Six-Year Window and Early Testing

Scheduling your exam attempt isn't just about picking a year you feel ready - it's bounded by formal eligibility rules. To sit for the AOA Subspecialty Sports Medicine CAQ exam, a candidate needs:

• Active AOA primary board certification
• An active medical license in one of the 50 states
• Good ethical standing
• Completion of a one-year AOA- or ACGME-approved sports medicine fellowship, with completion documentation and program-director support submitted to AOCSMEC

The published eligibility window runs for six years after fellowship completion. That six-year clock is the real scheduling constraint for most candidates: it defines how many annual July testing dates you actually have before the eligibility door closes and additional steps become necessary.

There's also a supported early-testing pathway. A fellow can sit for the exam after completing at least nine months of fellowship training, rather than waiting for full completion. In that scenario, results are withheld until the fellowship is finished and completion documentation is fully submitted. This matters for scheduling because it allows some candidates to take the July exam during their fellowship year rather than waiting an entire additional year post-graduation - but it only works if the nine-month threshold and documentation timeline line up with the July date.

For the complete eligibility checklist, including how the fellowship approval and documentation requirements are verified, see Sports Medicine CAQ Requirements 2026: Eligibility, Prerequisites & How to Qualify.

What's on the Exam and How to Schedule Around It

Because you get one shot per year, it's worth knowing exactly what the 200 questions cover before you commit to a July date. The current five-category outline weights content as follows:

Notice that Basic Science and Diagnostics together account for nearly half the exam. If your July timeline is tight, that's where the bulk of your scheduled review time should go first, not last. For a full walk-through of each domain with topic-level detail, see Sports Medicine CAQ Exam Domains 2026: Complete Guide to All 5 Content Areas.

For more on how the scoring itself works, including what a scaled score of 500 actually represents, see Sports Medicine CAQ Passing Score 2026: Exactly What You Need to Pass.

After You Pass: OCC Longitudinal Assessment Timing

Passing the initial exam is not the end of the scheduling story. Ongoing certification maintenance (OCC) for AOA Subspecialty Sports Medicine CAQ holders currently uses an annual longitudinal assessment model rather than a periodic high-stakes retest. Passing the longitudinal assessment requires a 70% passing requirement, which is a distinct scoring rule from the 500-scaled-score standard used on the initial written exam - don't confuse the two thresholds when planning ahead.

There's a registration cost to factor into your annual planning as well: a $100 assessment registration fee for participation in the longitudinal assessment cycle. This is separate from, and much smaller than, the $1,100 initial exam fee.

One scheduling detail that catches newly certified physicians off guard: there is a full-calendar-year grace period before longitudinal-assessment participation begins. If you pass the July 2026 exam, you are not immediately dropped into that year's assessment cycle - the grace period gives you time to get established before OCC participation starts. Beyond OCC, your primary-board CME and OCC obligations continue as normal, and there is no additional conjoint sports medicine CME requirement layered on top.

Building a Prep Timeline Around the July Date

With a single annual testing date, the practical question isn't "when should I start studying" in the abstract - it's "how do I sequence five domains of very different weight against one fixed July deadline." A domain-weighted schedule, built backward from July 10-11, tends to work better than a generic week-by-week template borrowed from an unrelated exam.

This structure isn't a generic study calendar - it's built directly from the published domain weights, so the time invested tracks the points actually available on the exam. For a deeper walk-through of first-attempt strategy, see Sports Medicine CAQ Study Guide 2026: How to Pass on Your First Attempt, and if you're still calibrating how demanding this exam is relative to your training background, read How Hard Is the Sports Medicine CAQ Exam? Complete Difficulty Guide 2026. Running timed practice sets through our practice test platform is one of the more efficient ways to confirm your domain-by-domain readiness before committing to the July date.

Frequently Asked Questions