CIPLE Exam Results and Certificate

The short version: your result appears on the CAPLE website, and the certificate is a separate step that follows it. Nobody emails you when either one happens, which is why the wait feels longer than it is.

• Your result goes up on the CAPLE classifications page. CAPLE publishes no deadline for this, and candidates commonly report one to three months.
• Your certificate goes to the centre where you sat the exam, 15 to 20 working days after the results are published. You collect it from them.

If you are waiting right now and nothing has appeared, skip to what to do if your result is late.

Results and certificate are two different events

This is the single most common misunderstanding, and it causes a lot of unnecessary panic.

When your result is published, nothing is posted to you. You will not get an email. You go and look it up yourself. Then, separately, CAPLE prints the certificates and sends them in a batch to each exam centre, and the centre contacts you or waits for you to contact them.

One candidate went back through everything CAPLE had sent them, looking for the part about the certificate:

That matches CAPLE's own process. The certificate is not withheld and nothing has gone wrong. It is simply a second stage that begins only after results are out.

So if your result is up and no certificate has arrived, you are not late yet. The clock on the certificate only starts when the result is published.

How to check your result

1. Go to the CAPLE classifications page, caple.letras.ulisboa.pt/classificacoes.
2. Enter your candidate code, the number you were given when you registered. Keep this. Without it you cannot look yourself up, and the page has no name search.
3. The page returns an overall qualitative grade, not a mark.

The grade you see is one of four:

For citizenship it makes no difference which of the three passing grades you get. A Suficiente certifies A2 exactly as a Muito Bom does.

Your percentages for each part of the exam are not shown on the portal. They appear on the certificate itself, or on the statement of results if you did not pass.

How long CIPLE results actually take

Here is the honest position: CAPLE does not publish a turnaround time for results. Its own page covering what happens after registration currently reads "content available shortly". So anyone quoting you a precise official figure is quoting something CAPLE has not said.

What candidates report is a wait of roughly one to three months, with two months being the figure that comes up most often. Every paper goes to Lisbon to be marked centrally, which is what makes the wait long and fairly uniform regardless of where you sat the exam.

Once results are published, the certificate timing is official: CAPLE states that certificates and diplomas reach the exam centres about 15 to 20 working days later. Its exam rules give a similar figure of around 21 working days. Either way, budget three to four weeks after your result appears, then collection time on top.

If you are planning a citizenship application around this, work backwards generously. The exam-to-certificate-in-hand span can run past three months without anything having gone wrong.

What to do if your result or certificate is late

Contact your exam centre first, not CAPLE. This is the part most people get backwards. CAPLE's own exam rules say candidates should contact the centre where they sat the exam whenever they need help, and the centre is the party that actually receives your certificate. It is also far more likely to answer.

Chasing CAPLE in Lisbon directly is where people report hitting silence, and it is common enough that you should plan around it rather than be surprised by it.

A sensible order:

1. Check the portal again. The portal and the centre do not always update in step, and either one can be ahead of the other.
2. Email the centre. Give your full name, candidate code, exam level, and the date and place you sat it. Ask specifically whether the certificate has arrived from CAPLE yet, which is a question they can answer from their desk.
3. Then email CAPLE at [email protected], with the same details. Expect it to be slow.

If you need the certificate faster than the normal cycle, there are paid options below rather than an escalation path. That is worth knowing before you spend weeks chasing.

Getting the certificate

The default is free and in person: CAPLE sends your certificate to your exam centre, and you collect it there. You will be asked to sign for it. Someone else can collect on your behalf if you authorise them in writing.

That default is genuinely awkward if you sat the exam somewhere you no longer are. One candidate described having to return to Lisbon and get to the Faculdade de Letras during business hours purely to pick up a piece of paper.

CAPLE does offer paid alternatives. Its published schedule of fees for 2026:

Two limitations worth knowing. Postal delivery is only offered after the normal delivery date has passed, so it is a fallback rather than something you can arrange upfront. And CAPLE does not accept collection or delivery by courier companies, so sending a courier is not an option.

Payment is by bank transfer, and the service only starts once you email proof of the transfer. Confirm the current fees and account details on CAPLE's own page before sending money.

If your certificate is lost after you have received it, a second copy costs 25 euros and is only available for two years after the exam. True duplicates are not issued otherwise. Scan it the day you get it.

What the certificate looks like

Useful if you are wondering whether what you are holding is the real thing, or what a registry office will accept.

A CIPLE pass produces a certificate. Diplomas are for B1 and above, so if someone asks for your CIPLE diploma, they mean this. It is printed on special paper, signed by the directors of both the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon and CAPLE, and carries a unique code in the bottom right corner.

Under Portuguese law, CIPLE at A2 is the minimum language level for acquiring Portuguese nationality, which is why this particular exam has the queues it does.

If you disagree with your result

You can ask for a re-evaluation, but read the terms before you do, because they are strict.

• The request must be made within 5 working days of the results being published. This is a short window and it starts whether or not you noticed the results were up.
• Request it by email to [email protected], or through your exam centre.
• It costs 25 euros, and the money is not returned regardless of the outcome.
• Every component is marked again, by a different team of assessors.
• CAPLE replies within 25 working days, and there is no appeal against that decision.

Two things people expect and do not get. Your answer papers stay CAPLE's property and are never returned to you or your centre. And CAPLE does not provide detailed feedback on how you performed, so a re-evaluation will not tell you what went wrong.

Given that, a re-evaluation makes sense if you have specific reason to think a component was mismarked, and much less sense as a general second opinion.

There is a wider point here that is worth knowing before you decide. Jim Ranalli, an applied linguist at Iowa State University who sat the CIPLE himself in April 2025, went looking for the published research behind the exam:

He notes that CAPLE's own bibliography is largely design manuals and preparation books. That is a narrow finding and not a claim that the exam is wrong or that your grade is wrong. But it does mean there is little published evidence to appeal to, which is part of why a re-evaluation is a re-mark rather than a conversation about the exam itself.

If you did not pass

You receive a comunicação de resultados instead of a certificate. It is a statement of your results, and you collect it from your exam centre the same way. It carries your percentages per component, which makes it the most useful document you will get for working out where you actually lost marks.

There is no partial resit. There is no carrying forward a component you passed. You register again for a future sitting and take the whole exam.

Which means you are back in the part everyone dreads: getting a place. Registration windows are short, popular centres fill quickly, and the exam only runs a few times a year. Sign up by clicking the button below to get live notifications of exam places becoming available. Alerts reach you on Telegram the moment a place opens at the centres you care about, for $3.99 per month, cancel anytime, so a resit does not turn into another wasted season.

The exam dates page has the full calendar, and here is what the alerts cover if you want the detail before signing up.

One caution when you plan the resit. A widely repeated claim online is that you must score at least 25 percent in every individual component regardless of your total. We could not find that rule stated anywhere on CAPLE's own exam description, rules, or FAQ, where the only stated thresholds are the overall bands above. It may well be real, and treating it as real costs you nothing: aim comfortably clear in every component rather than banking on a strong reading score rescuing a weak oral.

Check the official details

Fees, timings, and procedures change, and the paid services in particular are set year by year. This guide was checked against CAPLE's published exam rules, FAQ, and 2026 fee schedule in August 2026. Confirm anything that matters to your application on the official CAPLE website, caple.letras.ulisboa.pt, before acting on it.

Where CAPLE does not publish something, we have said so rather than filled the gap with a number.