Processing times · Q3 FY 25/26 · checked August 2026
You passed. Now how long?
In short
I passed the exam — how long until the license actually arrives?
The Board's published processing times, the year-over-year shift, and the cost of an application that comes back
96 days for an LMFT licenseThe Board publishes this every quarter and nobody reads it. In the last year getting registered got faster and getting licensed got much slower — an LMFT license went from 54 days to 96.
The current numbersWhat changed this yearThe cost of a gapWhy the old figures differHow much work it is
Q3 FY 25/26, against the same quarter a year earlier
Calendar days, for an application with nothing wrong with it.
These are the Board’s figures for approved applications with no deficiencies — the best case. Both columns come from the same report, which prints the year-ago quarter beside the current one, so the comparison is the Board’s own and not this page’s arithmetic.
| Application | A year earlier | Q3 FY 25/26 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| AMFT registration | 18 | 15 | -17% |
| ASW registration | 29 | 10 | -66% |
| APCC registration | 46 | 25 | -46% |
| LMFT license | 54 | 96 | +78% |
| LCSW license | 48 | 88 | +83% |
| LPCC license | 17 | 22 | +29% |
| LEP license | 19 | 11 | -42% |
Registrations are moving in one direction and licenses in the other. The Board attributes the licensing side to staffing constraints and cross-training. Read these as the shape of the queue in a quarter, not as a promise about your file — a mean of several hundred applications says nothing about any one of them.
The thing worth knowing
Registration sped up. Licensure did the opposite.
An ASW registration went from 29 days to 10 and an APCC registration from 46 to 25 over the year. If you are a new graduate waiting to start accruing hours, that wait is a fraction of what it was, and it is now short enough that the binding constraint is your transcript, not the Board.
An LMFT license went from 54 days to 96, and an LCSW license from 48 to 88. That is roughly three months of waiting after you have passed the exam, paid the fee and submitted a complete application. Plan the gap between the last supervised session and the first independent one around three months, not three weeks.
An LPCC license was processed in 22 days and an LEP license in 11, both broadly stable. The volumes are far smaller, which is the likeliest explanation and is not one the Board has given.
The one variable you control
What a missing document costs you.
A “deficient” application is one the Board had to come back to you about — a missing transcript, an unsigned verification, a gap in the hours. It is not a rejection. It is a letter, a wait for your reply, and a return to the back of somebody’s queue.
| Application | Approved, clean | Deficient | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|
| AMFT registration | 27 | 72 | 2.7× |
| ASW registration | 14 | 65 | 4.6× |
| APCC registration | 21 | 64 | 3.0× |
| LMFT license | 69 | 123 | 1.8× |
| LCSW license | 86 | 144 | 1.7× |
| LPCC license | 19 | 68 | 3.6× |
| LEP license | 13 | 186 | 14.3× |
Both columns are Q2 FY 2025/26, the only quarter for which the Board published both. The May 2026 report dropped the deficient table entirely, so there is no more recent figure and this page will not invent one. The LEP figure of 186 days is an artifact the Board explains itself: one application that remained deficient until it expired at 365 days.
How often it happens
In Q1 FY 2025/26 the Board put the licensing deficiency rate at 29.74%, up from about 23% the quarter before. Roughly three applications in ten come back.
Which makes the deficient column above the more honest planning number for a lot of people, and makes the checklist below worth more than any amount of refreshing BreEZe.
The things that most often send an application back
- Transcripts that have not arrived yet. The Board’s own explanation for a spike in deficient registrations was graduation-season timing — degrees conferred after the application went in.
- An experience verification the supervisor has not signed, or has signed in a way the form does not accept. The Board does accept an electronic signature; it does not accept a typed name.
- Hours that do not reconcile between the weekly logs and the verification total.
- A registration that lapsed mid-associateship, leaving a gap the hours cannot cross.
- Paper rather than BreEZe. The Board says online filing saves weeks against a paper application, and does not quantify it further — so treat that as a direction, not a number.
If you have seen different figures
The Board changed how it measures, and the two series do not join.
Through Q1 FY 2025/26 the Board published a single processing time per application type, covering every application it processed. From Q2 FY 2025/26 it publishes approved and deficient separately. Those measure different things, and the older numbers are still in circulation.
| Application | Q1 24/25 | Q2 24/25 | Q3 24/25 | Q4 24/25 | Q1 25/26 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMFT registration | 22 | 45 | 28 | 12 | 31 |
| ASW registration | 14 | 17 | 17 | 12 | 17 |
| APCC registration | 49 | 65 | 44 | 17 | 31 |
| LMFT license | 82 | 72 | 69 | 69 | 85 |
| LCSW license | 78 | 67 | 56 | 58 | 82 |
| LPCC license | 7 | 10 | 8 | 7 | 7 |
| LEP license | 12 | 14 | 18 | 18 | 12 |
The old basis: all applications processed, in calendar days, Q1 FY 2024/25 to Q1 FY 2025/26.
The same quarter, measured two ways
For Q2 FY 24/25, the packets published in 2025 reported an AMFT registration at 45 days on the old basis. The February 2026 packet, backfilling the same quarter on the new basis, reports 29 days.
Neither figure is wrong. One includes the applications that had something missing and one does not. Draw a single line through them and you get a fifteen-day improvement that never happened — which is why this page prints two tables and a paragraph instead of one chart.
Context for the queue
How much of this there is.
| In Q3 FY 25/26 | Received | Processed | A year earlier, received |
|---|---|---|---|
| Registrations — AMFT, ASW, APCC | 2,256 | 2,235 | 2,321 |
| Licenses — LMFT, LCSW, LPCC, LEP | 2,295 | 2,391 | 2,279 |
Licensing applications processed rose 10.3% year over year while the time each one took nearly doubled, which is the shape of a queue clearing faster than it is growing but from further behind.
| Who is on the register | Number | Year on year |
|---|---|---|
| LMFT | 58,933 | +3.55% |
| LCSW | 44,056 | +6.41% |
| LPCC | 6,602 | +18.89% |
| LEP | 2,445 | +4.44% |
| AMFT | 19,106 | — |
| ASW | 20,760 | — |
| APCC | 8,522 | — |
160,424 people hold a California behavioral sciences license or registration, up 5.64% on a year earlier. LPCC is growing at nearly 18% a year from a small base; the registration populations are reported without a growth figure.
Everything on this page is transcribed from the board meeting packets listed below and nothing is derived except the percentage changes, which are computed from the two figures printed either side of them. If you are still counting hours rather than waiting on a license, the hours calculator works from your own numbers; if you are waiting on a result rather than a license, the exam statistics are here.
Where every figure came from
Sources.
The board packets every figure was read from
- February 27-28, 2025, item 11 — Executive Officer Report - Q2 FY 2024/25 licensing and examination
- November 20-21, 2025, item 21 — Licensing Report - Q1 FY 2025/26
- February 19-20, 2026, item 14 — Registration and Licensing Report - Q2 FY 2025/26
- May 7-8, 2026, item 20 — Licensing Update - Q3 FY 2025/26, the most recent published
Finding them yourself
The Board reports a quarter roughly two months after it ends, so the most recent published figure is always a quarter or so old. Where a table was discontinued — as the deficient one was after Q2 FY 2025/26 — this page says so rather than carrying the last figure forward as though it were current.
