If you were studying for the AWS Certified Developer – Associate (DVA-C02), the calendar just made your decision for you. Registration for its successor, DVA-C03, opens on October 27, 2026, the last day to sit DVA-C02 is November 30, 2026, and DVA-C03 becomes generally available on December 1, 2026. If your exam date falls after that line, you are a DVA-C03 candidate whether you planned to be or not. The good news: this is an evolution, not a reinvention. The exam still tests whether you can build, deploy, and troubleshoot applications on AWS — it just weights the modern parts of that job more heavily.

What the exam is really testing

Strip away the service list and DVA-C03 tests one skill: can you take a working application and make it run well on AWS, not just run at all? That means four kinds of judgment, and every question is really one of them in disguise. First, development with AWS services.…