Short answer: the Medical Council of Canada does not put an expiry date on an MCCQE pass. Once you have passed, that result stands, and since January 26, 2026 it also earns you the LMCC without a year of Canadian residency. The longer answer matters more, because the organisations that actually decide your future — residency programs, Practice-Ready Assessment programs and provincial regulators — can each apply their own rules about how recent your exams need to be. This guide separates what the MCC guarantees from what everyone else checks.
What the MCC says about validity
The MCC’s position is simple: your MCCQE result does not expire. The same is true of the NAC Examination, where the MCC’s own wording is that only your most recent result “remains valid indefinitely and does not expire”. There is no renewal, no recertification and no date after which a pass becomes a fail. A physician who passed the MCCQE Part I in 2019 and a physician who passes the MCCQE in 2026 hold the same credential in the MCC’s eyes — and, as of April 1, 2026, the same exam name, since “Part I” was dropped when the MCC stopped delivering Part II.
What can change is the standard the exam is scored against. The pass score is now 439 on a 300–600 scale, set by a 2025 standard-setting exercise that replaced the 2018 standard of 226 on the old 100–400 scale. Your Statement of Results shows the scale that applied when you sat, and the MCC treats a pass under either standard as a pass. Nobody is asked to re-sit because the bar moved.
What the LMCC is — and what changed on January 26, 2026
The Licentiate of the Medical Council of Canada is the national qualification that every provincial and territorial regulator recognises as the exam standard for licensure. Until January 2026 you needed two things to be awarded it: a pass on the MCCQE Part I and twelve months of accredited Canadian postgraduate training. That second requirement is gone. Since January 26, 2026 the LMCC requires only a pass on the MCCQE and successful source verification of your medical degree through physiciansapply.ca.
For candidates who applied for the exam after that date, the digital LMCC number is issued automatically at no cost once both conditions are met. Candidates who applied before January 26, 2026 and request the LMCC afterwards pay a $50 administrative fee. Printed testamurs and wallet cards are optional and cost $100 each. In practice this means an internationally trained physician can now hold the LMCC before matching to residency or entering a Practice-Ready Assessment route — something that was impossible under the old rule and that changes how early it is worth writing the exam.
One thing the LMCC is not: a licence. Licensing is provincial. The LMCC is the exam credential the college in your province will look for, alongside your degree verification, postgraduate training or PRA outcome, and whatever else that college requires.
Where “how recent” actually gets checked
Because the MCC sets no expiry, the only place a time limit can appear is in the rules of whoever is assessing you. Three groups matter.
Residency programs through CaRMS. Every province requires the MCCQE for international medical graduates in the R-1 match, and every province except Quebec requires the NAC Examination as well (Quebec’s medical schools still ask for it even though the Collège des médecins du Québec no longer does). What varies is the deadline by which results must be in your file — Alberta’s IMG stream, for example, has required MCCQE results by late October of the application year, and British Columbia has only accepted results from sessions ending by late September. These are result deadlines, not validity limits: an older pass is fine, a late one is not. Check the current CaRMS “Summary of MCC examination requirements” and each program’s description every cycle, because they change.
Practice-Ready Assessment programs. PRA routes in every province require the MCCQE and most require the NAC. Several also ask that your exams, or your last clinical practice, fall within a defined number of years — a currency requirement on your overall profile rather than on the exam itself. If your MCCQE pass is several years old and you have been out of practice, expect the PRA program to look at both facts together.
Provincial regulators. Colleges do not re-examine you on the MCCQE, but they do assess recency of practice and may require supervised practice or further assessment when there has been a long gap. Again, this is about your clinical currency, not the shelf life of the exam.
The limits that do exist: attempts and windows
The rules with hard numbers are about attempts, not expiry. You may sit the MCCQE a maximum of four times, and after a third attempt you must wait one year from receiving that result before applying for a fourth. Once an application is accepted you have a twelve-month eligibility window to schedule and write the exam at a Prometric centre; miss it and you reapply. The NAC Examination allows three attempts in total, never in consecutive sessions, and — unlike the MCCQE — only your most recent result counts, which means a weaker second attempt replaces a stronger first one on your record.
Results for both exams are released roughly four weeks after a session or batch closes. Plan backwards from the deadline that matters to you: a pass that arrives a week after Alberta’s cutoff is a valid pass that does not help you this cycle.
What this means for when to write
If your MCCQE pass never expires and now earns the LMCC on its own, the calculation changes in favour of writing early. A pass in hand before you apply to CaRMS, before you enter a PRA stream, or before you leave your home country removes the single largest source of uncertainty in an IMG application — and a score well above 439 is something programs can see on your Statement of Results. The trade-off is that the exam has become harder to pass: in the MCC’s 2025–26 year, 48% of international candidates passed on their first attempt and 37% on a repeat. Writing early is only an advantage if you write prepared. Our 90-day plan lays out what that preparation looks like, and the MCC’s $1 Preparatory Examination is the cheapest way to check you are ready before you book.
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Sources: Medical Council of Canada — “Important update to LMCC eligibility and issuance starting January 26, 2026”; MCCQE eligibility and application page; NAC Examination eligibility and application page; MCC Annual Report 2025–26; CaRMS R-1 Summary of MCC examination requirements. Accurate as of September 2026 — confirm deadlines with the program you are applying to.
