NBCOT CEU Requirements 2026: 36 Units Each Renewal Cycle

What counts toward the NBCOT CEU requirements?

NBCOT’s Certification Renewal Activities Chart lists every accepted activity, what it’s worth and the most you can claim in a three-year cycle. A few examples from it:

Workshops, seminars, conferences or online courses approved by a regionally accredited college, a state licensing board, a continuing education provider or a third party: 1 unit an hour, claimed once per cycle.
The same kinds of course with a scored test, project or paper at the end: 1.25 units an hour.
Supervising a Level II fieldwork student, outside your main job: 1 unit per week per student, up to 12 units a cycle.
Reading peer-reviewed articles or textbook chapters and writing a report on them: 1 unit for every two.
Navigator tools, such as 0.5 unit for each Mini Practice Quiz or Case Simulation and 1.25 units for the Ethics Case Simulation.

NBCOT doesn’t keep its own list of approved providers. A course counts when one of those bodies has approved it and you keep the certificate or letter the chart asks for.

NBCOT: Certification Renewal Activities Chart (PDF) ↗

Converting hours and CEUs to PDUs

What you did	PDUs
1 contact hour	1
1 clock hour	1
0.1 CEU	1
1 contact hour with an assessment at the end	1.25
1 CAU	1

Hours don’t count meals or breaks. NBCOT follows the International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET) definition, where 1 CEU is 10 contact hours. The PDU calculator is in MyNBCOT, under Renewal Log.

Free units in NBCOT Navigator

Certified OTRs and COTAs get NBCOT Navigator at no extra cost and can earn up to 36 CAUs there, enough for a whole renewal. Its tools are:

Case simulations
Microcredentials
Mini practice quizzes
The OT Knowledge Library matching game
The Orthotic Builder
Physical agent modalities (PAMs), for OTRs only

Units go into your Renewal Log automatically, and NBCOT says 48 states plus the District of Columbia accept Navigator units toward license renewal.

Tracking units and the renewal audit

NBCOT points certificants to CE Broker, a free account for recording certification and state license units, which you need to open through NBCOT’s link even if you already use it for your state. Anyone who renews can be picked for a random audit and must then show proof of 36 units, so keep your documents for one full year after renewing. Failing the audit changes your status to Expired.

If you renewed in 2023, you could carry up to 10 extra units from your 2020 to 2023 cycle into the next one.

NBCOT certification renewal →States that accept NBCOT certification for CE →

Sources: NBCOT and 5 more. Checked October 2026.