What Changed in the 2027 CAIA® Curriculum

The CAIA Association® has published the 2027 Curriculum Companions, one for each level, which list every lesson in the 2027 curriculum and its learning objectives. The 2027 edition is the one for both the March 2027 and September 2027 exams. When I rebuilt FreeFellow's CAIA material for 2027, I went through both Companions lesson by lesson against the 2026 edition, and this post is what I found. The topic weights are in a separate post on the 2027 exam weight changes.

FreeFellow is a CAIA Association Preparatory Program Provider. Its materials supplement the 2027 CAIA Curriculum issued by CAIAA and don't replace it, and studying that curriculum is still essential to passing.

Most of the curriculum carried over. At Level I, 124 of the 209 lessons are unchanged from 2026, and another 71 were renamed or had their learning objectives rewritten. At Level II, 217 of the 278 lessons are unchanged and 32 were renamed or reworded. The rest is new material, and a few 2026 topics are gone.

Level I

Funds of Funds is no longer a Level I topic, so Level I has seven topics instead of eight. The ten 2026 lessons on funds of funds, funds of hedge funds and multi-alternative funds are gone from Level I. Fund-of-funds material now sits in Asset Allocation at Level II.

Infrastructure got the most new material. In 2026 it was three lessons inside Real Assets. In 2027 it's an 11-lesson chapter that covers the history and characteristics of infrastructure, its main risks, sectors and assets, investment styles, project finance, capital structures, risk and return, economic sensitivities, differences across regions, and underwriting. Private Debt adds a lesson on infrastructure debt as well.

The other new Level I lessons are single-factor default-free bond models and reduced-form modeling of credit risk, both in Introduction to Alternative Investments, and long-hold buyout funds in Private Equity. The CDO lessons in Private Debt are reorganized around an overview of structuring and the main CDO variations.

Intellectual property is gone, including the lessons on art and on patents. So are the longevity and mortality products, such as life settlements and viatical settlements, and the Level I lesson on interest rate swaps. If you studied any of these for a 2026 sitting, you can set them aside.

Level II

Level II keeps its ten topics, but several chapters are new.

Asset Allocation changes the most. It adds three lessons on the Black-Litterman model, including how it applies to private markets and how to constrain it. It adds a chapter on forecasting cash flows for private fund commitments, with the Takahashi-Alexander model (which moves here from Emerging Topics), historical simulation and Monte Carlo cash-flow models, and managing unfunded commitments. The total portfolio approach gets three more lessons, on moving to it, maintaining it and how it changes the GP-LP relationship. Funds of funds and their historical returns are covered here too.

Accessing Alternative Investments has a new six-lesson chapter on tokenization. It runs from an overview and the tokenization process through legal and regulatory issues, risks, a worked example and case studies. Tokenization was an Emerging Topics reading in 2026.

Due Diligence and Selecting Managers adds operational due diligence and building an ODD framework, plus a lesson on the Alternative Investment Standards. Volatility and Complex Strategies adds crypto risk and risk management and market manipulation in cryptocurrencies. Institutional Asset Owners adds liability management with interest rate swaps, and Universal Investment Considerations adds a lesson on sustainability and infrastructure.

The biggest cut is the fixed-income tree material in Methods and Models. The one-period and multi-period binomial trees, the Black-Derman-Toy model, and valuing convertibles and callable bonds on a tree are all gone. So are the lessons on funds of hedge funds (their characteristics, portfolio construction and how they add value), investable hedge fund indices, the EUSIPA classification of structured products, and uncertainty, ambiguity and opacity.

The Emerging Topics readings

Emerging Topics is tested only in the constructed-response section of Level II, where it's worth 10% of the exam. For 2027 it's eight outside readings.

Four are new: a CIO's blueprint for the first 100 days, continuation funds from the LP and GP side, three models of the liquidity premium, and an introduction to quantum computing for investors. Four carry over from 2026: direct value creation in the pension fund industry, value creation in private equity, scale, scope and speed in private capital funds, and the history of natural language processing from ELIZA to ChatGPT.

Four 2026 readings dropped out. Tokenization became the full chapter above, the Takahashi-Alexander model moved into Asset Allocation, and the readings on assessing long-term investor performance and on managing liquidity for capital calls are gone.

What I changed on FreeFellow

The exam format is the same as in 2026: both levels run two 130-minute sections inside a five-hour appointment, and Level II is still 70% multiple choice and 30% constructed response. One line in the 2027 handbook is worth knowing: some questions may need more than one correct response as the best answer.

I rebuilt both levels on the 2027 lessons. Questions on dropped topics were retired, questions on renamed lessons were retagged to their 2027 outcomes, and new questions cover the new lessons, so every 2027 lesson has at least five free practice questions. The written lessons were revised against the 2027 text, the mock exams were rebalanced to the 2027 weights, and the Level II essays cover the 2027 Emerging Topics readings, including the new ones on the liquidity premium and quantum computing. It's all free with an account, starting from the CAIA Level I and CAIA Level II pages.