Test strategy

What Changes on the FAA Knowledge Tests on October 26, 2026

✓ Reviewed against current FAA sources on October 5, 2026

The FAA is changing how charts appear on several knowledge tests. If you are testing on or after October 26, 2026, this affects how you should practice. Here is what was announced and what it means in practice.

What the FAA said

In its testing notice, the FAA stated that beginning October 26, 2026, the Instrument Rating Airplane (IRA) and Unmanned Aircraft General - Small (UAG) tests "will include image-based questions not found in the test supplements."

The images come from current FAA products: the latest Sectional Charts, Instrument Approach Charts and Low Altitude Enroute Charts. The FAA describes this as part of an ongoing Graphics Conversion Project, and noted that the October 26 date is a correction to a date given in an earlier edition of the advisory.

The same notice indicates that from the same date, the Flight Instructor and Airline Transport Pilot exams will also carry questions with embedded images.

Why this matters more than it sounds

For decades the deal was simple: the FAA published a testing supplement, you studied the figures in it and the chart questions on test day used those same figures. A candidate could learn the specific excerpts.

That deal is ending for the affected tests. An image-based question drawn from a current chart, and not reproduced in any supplement, cannot be studied in advance. You have to be able to read a chart you have never seen.

This is a better test of a real skill, and it is harder for anyone who prepared by memorizing supplement figures.

What this means for Part 107 candidates

The UAG test is the Part 107 remote pilot knowledge test, so this applies directly. Chart questions will increasingly come from live sectionals rather than the familiar supplement excerpts.

Practice accordingly. Pull up a current sectional for an area you have never flown and work through it: identify the airspace classes and their floors and ceilings, find the Class D ceiling in its dashed box, read a Class C shelf, locate the Mode C veil, decode an airport data block. If you can do that on an unfamiliar chart, the change costs you nothing. Our guide to reading a sectional chart covers the symbology, and airspace classes A through G covers what the boundaries mean.

What this means for Private Pilot candidates

This is the part most coverage gets wrong. The October 26 notice names IRA and UAG, so a quick reading suggests Private Pilot is unaffected.

It is not that simple. The FAA has indicated that the Commercial, Private, Sport and Instrument exams already feature embedded images as part of the same Graphics Conversion Project. For a Private Pilot candidate, reading real charts is not a precaution against a future change. It is current practice.

So the advice is the same for everyone: do not build your chart preparation around a fixed set of supplement figures.

How to prepare

• Work live charts, not just supplement excerpts. Current sectionals are freely available, and the skill transfers in a way memorized figures do not.
• Learn the symbology, not the example. If you know what a dashed magenta line means you can read any chart. If you know that one figure in one supplement, you know one figure.
• Practice under time pressure. Reading an unfamiliar chart takes longer than recalling a familiar one. Build that into your pacing.
• Check the testing supplement you are given. Supplements still exist and still carry many figures. The change is that they no longer carry all of them.

If you are testing before October 26

The change does not apply retroactively, and a test taken before that date follows the existing format. But a knowledge test result is valid for 24 calendar months, so most candidates reading this will be flying under the new arrangement well before their practical test. The chart-reading skill is worth building regardless.

Source: FAA Airman Testing Community advisory, August and September 2026 editions.